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MARGARET OGILVY 



MARGARET OGILVY 



BY HER SON 

J. M. BARRIE 



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NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1896 



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Copyright, 1896, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



To the Memory of 
My Sister Jane Ann 



I 



Contents 

Chapter Page 

I. How MY Mother got her soft Face i 

II. What She had been 21 

III. What I should be 44 

IV. An Editor 63 

V. A Day of her Life 84 

VI. Her Maid of All Work .... 109 

VII. R. L. S 131 

VIII. A Panic in the House .... 150 

IX. My Heroine 165 

X. Art Thou afraid His Power shall 

Fail? 186 



Margaret Ogilvy 

CHAPTER I 

HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE 

On the day I was born we bought six hair- 
bottomed chairs, and in our little house it 
was an event, the first great victory in a 
woman's long campaign ; how they had 
been laboured for, the pound-note and the 
thirty threepenny bits they cost, what 
anxiety there was about the purchase, the 
show they made in possession of the west 
room, my father's unnatural coolness 
when he brought them in (but his face 
was white) — I so often heard the tale 
afterwards, and shared as boy and man in 
so many similar triumphs, that the com- 



MARGARET OGILVY 

ing of the chairs seems to be something 
I remember, as if I had jumped out of bed 
on that first day, and run ben to see how 
they looked. I am sure my mother's feet 
were ettling to be ben long before they 
could be trusted, and that the moment after 
she was left alone with me she was discov- 
ered barefooted in the west room, doctor- 
ing a scar (which she had been the first to 
detect) on one of the chairs, or sitting on 
them regally or withdrawing and re-open- 
ing the door suddenly to take the six by 
surprise. And then, I think, a shawl was 
flung over her (it is strange to me to think 
it was not I who ran after her with the 
shawl), and she was escorted sternly back 
to bed and reminded that she had pro- 
mised not to budge, to which her reply 
was probably that she had been gone but 
an instant, and the implication that there- 
fore she had not been gone at all. Thus 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

was one little bit of her revealed to me 
at once : I wonder if I took note of it. 
Neighbours came in to see the boy and 
the chairs. I wonder if she deceived me 
when she affected to think that there 
were others like us, or whether I saw 
through her from the first, she was so 
easily seen through. When she seemed 
to agree with them that it would be impos- 
sible to give me a college education, was I 
so easily taken in, or did I know already 
what ambitions burned behind that dear 
face ? when they spoke of the chairs as the 
goal quickly reached, was I such a new- 
comer that her timid lips must say ' They 
are but a beginning' before I heard the 
words ? And when we were left together, 
did I laugh at the great things that were in 
her mind, or had she to whisper them to me 
first, and then did I put my arm round her 
and tell her that I would help ? Thus it was 
3 



MARGARET OGILVY 

for such a long time : it is strange to me to 
feel that it was not so from the beginning. 
It is all guess-work for six years, and 
she whom I see in them is the woman 
who came suddenly into view when they 
were at an end. Her timid lips I have 
said, but they were not timid then, and 
when I knew her the timid lips had come. 
The soft face — they say the face was not 
so soft then. The shawl that was flung 
over her — we had not begun to hunt her 
with a shawl, nor to make our bodies a 
screen between her and the draughts, nor 
to creep into her room a score of times in 
the night to stand looking at her as she 
slept. We did not see her becoming 
little then, nor sharply turn our heads 
when she said wonderingly how small her 
arms had grown. In her happiest moments 
— and never was a happier woman — her 
mouth did not of a sudden begin to 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

twitch, and tears to lie on the mute blue 
eyes in which I have read all I know and 
would ever care to write. For when you 
looked into my mother's eyes you knew, 
as if He had told you, why God sent her 
into the world — it was to open the minds 
of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. 
And that is the beginning and end of 
literature. Those eyes that I cannot see 
until I was six years old have guided me 
through life, and I pray God they may 
remain my only earthly judge to the last. 
They were never more my guide than 
when I helped to put her to earth, not 
whimpering because my mother had been 
taken away after seventy-six glorious years 
of life, but exulting in her even at the grave. 

She had a son who was far away at 
school. I remember very little about 
him, only that he was a merry-faced boy 
5 



MARGARET OGILVY 

who ran like a squirrel up a tree and 
shook the cherries into my lap. When 
he was thirteen and I was half his age 
the terrible news came, and I have been 
told the face of my mother was awful in 
its calmness as she set off to get between 
Death and her boy. We trooped with 
her down the brae to the wooden station, 
and I think I was envying her the journey 
in the mysterious waggons ; I know we 
played around her, proud of our right to 
be there, but I do not recall it, I only 
speak from hearsay. Her ticket was 
taken, she had bidden us good-bye with 
that fighting face which I cannot see, and 
then my father came out of the telegraph- 
office and said huskily ' He 's gone ! ' 
Then we turned very quietly and went 
home again up the little brae. But I 
speak from hearsay no longer ; I knew 
my mother for ever now. 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

That Is how she got her soft face and 
her pathetic ways and her large charity, 
and why other mothers ran to her when 
they had lost a child. ' Dinna greet, poor 
Janet/ she would say to them, and they 
would answer, ' Ah, Margaret, but you 're 
greeting yoursel/ Margaret Ogilvy had 
been her maiden name, and after the 
Scotch custom she was still Margaret 
Ogilvy to her old friends. Margaret 
Ogilvy I loved to name her. Often 
when I was a boy, ' Margaret Ogilvy, are 
you there ? ' I would call up the stair. 

She was always delicate from that hour, 
and for many months she was very ill. 1 
have heard that the first thing she ex- 
pressed a wish to see was the christening 
robe, and she looked long at it and then 
turned her face to the wall. That was 
what made me as a boy think of it always 

as the robe in which he was christened, but 
7 



MARGARET OGILVY 

I knew later that we had all been christened 
in it, from the oldest of the family to the 
youngest, between whom stood twenty 
years. Hundreds of other children were 
christened in it also, such robes being then 
a rare possession, and the lending of ours 
among my mother's glories. It was car- 
ried carefully from house to house, as if it 
were itself a child ; my mother made much 
of it, smoothed it out, petted it, smiled to 
it before putting it into the arms of those 
to whom it was being lent ; she was in our 
pew to see it borne magnificently (some- 
thing inside it now) down the aisle to 
the pulpit side, when a stir of expectancy 
went through the church and we kicked 
each other's feet beneath the book-board 
but were reverent in the face ; and how- 
ever the child might behave, laughing 
brazenly or skirling to its mother's shame, 
and whatever the father as he held it up 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

might do, look doited probably and bow at 
the wrong time, the christening robe of long 
experience helped them through. And 
when it was brought back to her she took 
it in her arms as softly as if it might be 
asleep, and unconsciously pressed it to her 
breast : there was never anything in the 
house that spoke to her quite so eloquently 
as that little white robe ; it was the one of 
her children that always remained a baby. 
And she had not made it herself, which 
was the most wonderful thing about it to 
me, for she seemed to have made all other 
things. All the clothes in the house were 
of her making, and you don't know her in 
the least if you think they were out of the 
fashion ; she turned them and made them 
new again, she beat them and made them 
new again, and then she coaxed them into 
being new again just for the last time, she 
let them out and took them in and put on 
9 



MARGARET OGILVY 

new braid, and added a piece up the back, 
and thus they passed from one member of 
the family to another until they reached 
the youngest, and even when we were 
done with them they reappeared as some- 
thing else. In the fashion ! I must come 
back to this. Never was a woman with such 
an eye for it. She had no fashion-plates ; 
she did not need them. The minister's 
wife (a cloak), the banker's daughters (the 
new sleeve) — they had but to pass our 
window once, and the scalp, so to speak, 
was in my mother's hands. Observe her 
rushing, scissors in hand, thread in mouth, 
to the drawers where her daughters' 
Sabbath clothes were kept. Or go to 
church next Sunday, and watch a certain 
family filing in, the boy lifting his legs 
high to show off his new boots, but all 
the others demure, especially the timid, 
unobservant looking little woman in the 

lO 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

rear of them. If you were the minister's 
wife that day or the banker's daughters 
you would have got a shock. But she 
bought the christening robe, and when I 
used to ask why, she would beam and 
look conscious, and say she wanted to be 
extravagant once. And she told me, still 
smiling, that the more a woman was given 
to stitching and making things for herself, 
the greater was her passionate desire now 
and again to rush to the shops and 'be 
foolish.* The christening robe with its 
pathetic frijls is over half a century old 
now, and has begun to droop a little, like 
a daisy whose time is past, but it is as 
fondly kept together as ever : I saw it in 
use again only the other day. 

My mother lay in bed with the christ- 
ening robe beside her, and I peeped in 
many times at the door and then went to 

the stair and sat on it and sobbed. I 
II 



MARGARET OGILVY 

know not if it was that first day, or many 
days afterwards, that there came to me 
my sister, the daughter my mother loved 
the best, yes, more I am sure even than 
she loved me, whose great glory she has 
been since I was six years old. This 
sister, who was then passing out of her 
teens, came to me with a very anxious 
face and wringing her hands, and she told 
me to go ben to my mother and say to 
her that she still had another boy. I 
went ben excitedly, but the room was 
dark, and when I heard the door shut 
and no sound come from the bed I was 
afraid, and I stood still. I suppose I 
was breathing hard, or perhaps I was 
crying, for after a time I heard a listless 
voice that had never been listless before 
say, ' Is that you ? ' I think the tone 
hurt me, for I made no answer, and then 
the voice said more anxiously, ' Is that 

12 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

you ? ' again. I thought it was the dead 
boy she was speaking to, and I said in 
a Httle lonely voice, ' No, it 's no him, 
it 's just me/ Then I heard a cry, and 
my mother turned in bed, and though it 
was dark I knew that she was holding out 
her arms. 

After that I sat a great deal in her bed 
trying to make her forget him, which was 
my crafty way of playing physician, and 
if I saw any one out of doors do some- 
thing that made the others laugh I imme- 
diately hastened to that dark room and 
did it before her. I suppose I was an 
odd little figure ; I have been told that 
my anxiety to brighten her gave my face 
a strained look and put a tremor into 
the joke (I would stand on my head in 
the bed, my feet against the wall, and 
then cry excitedly, ^Are you laughing, 
mother ? *) — and perhaps what made her 
13 



MARGARET OGILVY 

laugh was something I was unconscious 
of, but she did laugh suddenly now and 
then, whereupon I screamed exultantly 
to that dear sister, who was ever in wait- 
ing, to come and see the sight, but by the 
time she came the soft face was wet again. 
Thus I was deprived of some of my 
glory, and I remember once only making 
her laugh before witnesses. I kept a 
record of her laughs on a piece of paper, 
a stroke for each, and it was my custom 
to show this proudly to the doctor every 
morning. There were five strokes the 
first time I slipped it into his hand, and 
when their meaning was explained to him, 
he laughed so boisterously that I cried, ' I 
wish that was one of hers ! ' Then he 
was sympathetic, and asked me if my 
mother had seen the paper yet, and when 
I shook my head he said that if I showed 
it to her now and told her that these were 
14 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

her five laughs he thought I might win 

another. I had less confidence, but he 

was the mysterious man whom you ran 

for in the dead of night (you flung sand at 

his window to waken him, and if it was 

only toothache he extracted the tooth 

through the open window, but when it 

was something sterner he was with you in 

the dark square at once, like a man who 

slept in his topcoat), so I did as he bade 

me, and not only did she laugh then but 

again when I put the laugh down, so that 

though it was really one laugh with a tear 

in the middle I counted it as two. 

It was doubtless that same sister who 

told me not to sulk when my mother 

lay thinking of him, but to try instead 

to get her to talk about him. I did not 

see how this could make her the merry 

mother she used to be, but I was told 

that if I could not do it nobody could, 
15 



MARGARET OGILVY 

and this made me eager to begin. At 
first, they say, I was often jealous, stop- 
ping her fond memories with the cry, 
' Do you mind nothing about me ? * but 
that did not last; its place was taken 
by an intense desire (again, I think, my 
sister must have breathed it into life) to 
become so like him that even my mother 
should not see the difference, and many 
and artful were the questions I put to 
that end. Then I practised in secret, 
but after a whole week had passed I 
was still rather like myself He had 
such a cheery way of whistling, she had 
told me, it had always brightened her 
at her work to hear him whistling, and 
when he whistled he stood with his legs 
apart, and his hands in the pockets of 
his knickerbockers. I decided to trust 
to this, so one day after I had learned 

his whistle (every boy of enterprise in- 
i6 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

vents a whistle of his own) from boys 
who had been his comrades, I secretly 
put on a suit of his clothes, dark grey 
they were, with little spots, and they 
fitted me many years afterwards, and thus 
disguised I slipped, unknown to the 
others, into my mother^s room. Quak- 
ing, I doubt not, yet so pleased, I stood 
still until she saw me, and then — how 
it must have hurt her ! ' Listen ! ' I cried 
in a glow of triumph, and I stretched 
my legs wide apart and plunged my hands 
into the pockets of my knickerbockers, 
and began to whistle. 

She lived twenty-nine years after his 
death, such active years until toward the 
end, that you never knew where she 
was unless you took hold of her, and 
though she was frail henceforth and ever 
growing frailer, her housekeeping again 
became famous, so that brides called as 

2 ly 



MARGARET OGILVY 

a matter of course to watch her camming 
and sanding and stitching : there are old 
people still, one or two, to tell with won- 
der in their eyes how she could bake 
twenty-four bannocks in the hour, and 
not a chip in one of them. And how 
many she gave away, how much she gave 
away of all she had, and what pretty 
ways she had of giving it ! Her face 
beamed and rippled with mirth as be- 
fore, and her laugh, that I had tried so 
hard to force, came running home again. 
I have heard no such laugh as hers save 
from merry children ; the laughter of 
most of us ages, and wears out with 
the body, but hers remained gleeful to 
the last, as if it were born afresh every 
morning. There was always something 
of the child in her, and her laugh was 
its voice, as eloquent of the past to me 

as was the christening robe to her. But 
i8 



MY MOTHER'S SOFT FACE 

I had not made her forget the bit of 
her that was dead ; in those nine and 
twenty years he was not removed one 
day farther from her. Many a time she 
fell asleep speaking to him, and even 
while she slept her lips moved and she 
smiled as if he had come back to her, 
and when she woke he might vanish so 
suddenly that she started up bewildered 
and looked about her, and then said 
slowly, ' My David 's dead ! * or perhaps 
he remained long enough to whisper why 
he must leave her now, and then she lay 
silent with filmy eyes. When I became 
a man and he was still a boy of thirteen, 
I wrote a little paper called ^ Dead this 
Twenty Years,' which was about a similar 
tragedy in another woman's life, and it is 
the only thing I have written that she 
never spoke about, not even to that 

daughter she loved the best. No one 
19 



MARGARET OGILVY 

ever spoke of it to her, or asked her if 
she had read it : one does not ask a 
mother if she knows that there is a little 
coffin in the house. She read many times 
the book in which it is printed, but when 
she came to that chapter she would put 
her hands to her heart or even over her 
ears. 



20 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

What she had been, what I should be, 
these were the two great subjects between 
us in my boyhood, and while we discussed 
the one we were deciding the other, though 
neither of us knew it. 

Before I reached my tenth year a giant 
entered my native place in the night, and 
we woke to find him in possession. He 
transformed it into a new town at a rate 
with which we boys only could keep up, 
for as fast as he built dams we made rafts 
to sail in them ; he knocked down houses, 
and there we were crying, ' Pilly ! ' among 
the ruins ; he dug trenches, and we 
jumped them ; we had to be dragged 

21 



MARGARET OGILVY 

by the legs from beneath his engines, he 
sunk wells, and in we went. But though 
there were never circumstances to which 
boys could not adapt themselves in half 
an hour, older folk are slower in the up- 
take, and I am sure they stood and gaped 
at the changes so suddenly being worked 
in our midst, and scarce knew their way 
home now in the dark. Where had been 
formerly but the click of the shuttle was 
soon the roar of ' power,' handlooms were 
pushed into a corner as a room is cleared 
for a dance, every morning at half-past 
five the town was awakened with a yell, 
and from a chimney-stalk that rose high 
into our caller air the conqueror waved 
for evermore his flag of smoke. Another 
era had dawned, new customs, new fash- 
ions sprang into life, all as lusty as if they 
had been born at twenty-one ; as quickly 
as two people may exchange seats, the 

22 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

daughter, till now but a knitter of stock- 
ings, became the breadwinner, he who had 
been the breadwinner sat down to the 
knitting of stockings : what had been 
yesterday a nest of weavers was to-day a 
town of girls. 

I am not of those who would fling 
stones at the change ; it is something, 
surely, that backs are no longer pre- 
maturely bent; you may no more look 
through dim panes of glass at the aged 
poor weaving tremulously for their little 
bit of ground in the cemetery. Rather 
are their working years too few now, not 
because they will it so but because it is 
with youth that the power-looms must be 
fed. Well, this teaches them to make 
provision, and they have the means as 
they never had before. Not in batches 
are boys now sent to college, the half- 
dozen a year have dwindled to one, doubt- 
23 



MARGARET OGILVY 

less because in these days they can begin to 
draw wages as they step out of their four- 
teenth year. Here assuredly there is loss, 
but all the losses would be but a pebble in 
a sea of gain were it not for this, that with 
so many of the family, young mothers 
among them, working in the factories, home 
life is not so beautiful as it was. So much 
of what is great in Scotland has sprung 
from the closeness of the family ties ; 
it is there I sometimes fear that my 
country is being struck. That we are all 
being reduced to one dead level, that 
* character * abounds no more and life 
itself is less interesting, such things I 
have read, but I do not believe them. I 
have even seen them given as my reason 
for writing of a past time, and in that at 
least there is no truth. In our little town, 
which is a sample of many, life is as in- 
teresting, as pathetic, as joyous as ever it 
24 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

was ; no group of weavers was better to 
look at or think about than the rivulet 
of winsome girls that overruns our streets 
every time the sluice is raised, the comedy 
of summer evenings and winter firesides 
is played with the old zest and every 
window-blind is the curtain of a romance. 
Once the lights of a little town are lit, 
who could ever hope to tell all its story, 
or the story of a single wynd in it ? And 
who looking at lighted windows needs to 
turn to books? The reason my books 
deal with the past instead of with the 
life I myself have known is simply this, 
that I soon grow tired of writing tales 
unless I can see a little girl, of whom my 
mother has told me, wandering confidently 
through the pages. Such a grip has her 
memory of her girlhood had upon me 
since I was a boy of six. 

Those innumerable talks with her made 

25 



MARGARET OGILVY 

her youth as vivid to me as my own, and 

so much more quaint, for, to a child, the 

oddest of things, and the most richly 

coloured picture-book, is that his mother 

was once a child also, and the contrast 

between what she is and what she was 

is perhaps the source of all humour. My 

mother's father, the one hero of her life, 

died nine years before I was born, and 

I remember this with bewilderment, so 

familiarly does the weather-beaten mason's 

figure rise before me from the old chair 

on which I was nursed and now write my 

books. On the surface he is as hard as 

the stone on which he chiselled, and his 

face is dyed red by its dust, he is rounded 

in the shoulders and a ' hoast ' hunts him 

ever; sooner or later that cough must 

carry him off, but until then it shall not 

keep him from the quarry, nor shall his 

chapped hands, as long as they can grasp 
26 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

the mell. It is a night of rain or snow, 
and my mother, the Httle girl in a pinafore 
who is aheady his housekeeper, has been 
many times to the door to look for him. 
At last he draws nigh, hoasting. Or I see 
him setting oif to church, for he was a 
great ' stoop ' of the Auld Licht kirk, and 
his mouth is very firm now as if there 
were a case of discipline to face, but on 
his way home he is bowed with pity. 
Perhaps his little daughter who saw him 
so stern an hour ago does not under- 
stand why he wrestles so long in prayer 
to-night, or why when he rises from his 
knees he presses her to him with un- 
wonted tenderness. Or he is in this chair 
repeating to her his favourite poem, ' The 
Cameronian's Dream,' and at the first lines 
so solemnly uttered, 

* In a dream of the night I was wafted away,' 

she screams with excitement, just as I 

27 



MARGARET OGILVY 

screamed long afterwards when she re- 
peated them in his voice to me. Or I 
watch, as from a window, while she sets 
off through the long parks to the distant 
place where he is at work, in her hand a 
flaggon which contains his dinner. She 
is singing to herself and gleefully swing- 
ing the flaggon, she jumps the burn and 
proudly measures the jump with her eye, 
but she never dallies unless she meets a 
baby, for she was so fond of babies that 
she must hug each one she met, but 
while she hugged them she also noted 
how their robes were cut, and afterwards 
made paper patterns, which she concealed 
jealously, and in the fulness of time her 
first robe for her eldest born was fash- 
ioned from one of these patterns, made 
when she was in her twelfth year. 

She was eight when her mother's death 

made her mistress of the house and 

28 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

mother to her little brother, and from 

that time she scrubbed and mended and 

baked and sewed, and argued with the 

flesher about the quarter pound of beef 

and penny bone which provided dinner 

for two days (but if you think that this 

was poverty you don't know the meaning 

of the word), and she carried the water 

from the pump, and had her washing days 

and her ironings and a stocking always on 

the wire for odd moments, and gossiped 

like a matron with the other women, and 

humoured the men with a tolerant smile 

— all these things she did as a matter of 

course, leaping joyful from bed in the 

morning because there was so much to 

do, doing it as thoroughly and sedately 

as if the brides were already due for a 

lesson, and then rushing out in a fit of 

childishness to play dumps or palaulays 

with others of her age. I see her frocks 
29 



MARGARET OGILVY 

lengthening, though they were never very- 
short, and the games given reluctantly 
up. The horror of my boyhood was that 
I knew a time would come when I also 
must give up the games, and how it was 
to be done I saw not (this agony still re- 
turns to me in dreams, when I catch 
myself playing marbles, and look on with 
cold displeasure) ; I felt that I must con- 
tinue playing in secret, and I took this 
shadow to her, when she told me her own 
experience, which convinced us both that 
we were very like each other inside. She 
had discovered that work is the best fun 
after all, and I learned it in time, but 
have my lapses, and so had she. 

I know what was her favourite costume 
when she was at the age that they make 
heroines of : it was a pale blue with a pale 
blue bonnet, the white ribbons of which 
tied aggravatingly beneath the chin, and 
30 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

when questioned about this garb she never 
admitted that she looked pretty in it, but 
she did say, with blushes too, that blue 
was her colour, and then she might smile, 
as at some memory, and begin to tell us 
about a man who — but it ended there with 
another smile which was longer in depart- 
ing. She never said, indeed she denied 
strenuously, that she had led the men a 
dance, but again the smile returned, and 
came between us and full behef. Yes, she 
had her little vanities ; when she got the 
Mizpah ring she did carry that finger in 
such a way that the most reluctant must 
see. She was very particular about her 
gloves, and hid her boots so that no other 
should put them on, and then she forgot 
their hiding-place, and had suspicions of 
the one who found them. A good way 
of enraging her was to say that her last 

year's bonnet would do for this year with- 
31 



MARGARET OGILVY 

out alteration, or that it would defy the 
face of clay to count the number of her 
shawls. In one of my books there is a 
mother who is setting off with her son for 
the town to which he had been called as 
minister, and she pauses on the threshold 
to ask him anxiously if he thinks her bon- 
net ' sets ' her. A reviewer said she acted 
thus, not because she cared how she looked, 
but for the sake of her son. This, I re- 
member, amused my mother very much. 

I have seen many weary on-dings of 
snow, but the one I seem to recollect best 
occurred nearly twenty years before I was 
born. It was at the time of my mother's 
marriage to one who proved a most loving 
as he was always a well-loved husband, a 
man I am very proud to be able to call my 
father. I know not for how many days 
the snow had been falling, but a day came 
when the people lost heart and would make 
32 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

no more gullies through it, and by next 
morning to do so was impossible, they 
could not fling the snow high enough. 
Its back was against every door when 
Sunday came, and none ventured out save 
a valiant few, who buiffeted their way into 
my mother's home to discuss her predica- 
ment, for unless she was ' cried ' in the 
church that day she might not be married 
for another week, and how could she be 
cried with the minister a field away and 
the church buried to the waist ? For 
hours they talked, and at last some men 
started for the church, which was several 
hundred yards distant. Three of them 
found a window, and forcing a passage 
through it, cried the pair, and that is how 
it came about that my father and mother 
were married on the first of March. 
That would be the end, I suppose, if it 

were a story, but to my mother it was 
3 33 



MARGARET OGILVY 

only another beginning, and not the last. 

I see her bending over the cradle of her 

first-born, college for him already in her 

eye (and my father not less ambitious), 

and anon it is a girl who is in the cradle, 

and then another girl — already a tragic 

figure to those who know the end. I 

wonder if any instinct told my mother 

that the great day of her life was when she 

bore this child ; what I am sure of is that 

from the first the child followed her with 

the most wistful eyes and saw how she 

needed help and longed to rise and give it. 

For of physical strength my mother had 

never very much ; it was her spirit that got 

through the work, and in those days she 

was often so ill that the sand rained on the 

doctor's window, and men ran to and fro 

with leeches, and ' she is in life, we can say 

no more ' was the information for those who 

came knocking at the door. ' I am sorrow 
34 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

to say/ her father writes in an old letter 
now before me, ' that Margaret is in a 
state that she was never so bad before in 
this world. Till Wednesday night she 
was in as poor a condition as you could 
think of to be alive. However, after 
bleeding, leeching, etc., the Dr. says this 
morning that he is better hoped now, but 
at present we can say no more but only 
she is alive and in the hands of Him in 
whose hands all our lives are. I can give 
you no adequate view of what my feelings 
are, indeed they are a burden too heavy 
for me and I cannot describe them. I 
look on my right and left hand and find 
no comfort, and if it were not for the rock 
that is higher than I my spirit would 
utterly fail, but blessed be His name who 
can comfort those that are cast down. O 
for more faith in His supporting grace in 
this hour of trial.' 

35 



MARGARET OGILVY 

Then she is ' on the mend/ she may 
' thole thro' * if they take great care of her, 
'which we will be forward to do.* The 
fourth child dies when but a few weeks 
old, and the next at two years. She was 
her grandfather's companion, and thus he 
wrote of her death, this stern, self-edu- 
cated Auld Licht with the chapped hands : 

' I hope you received my last in which I 

spoke of Dear little Lydia being unwell. 

Now with deep sorrow I must tell you 

that yesterday I assisted in laying her 

dear remains in the lonely grave. She 

died at 7 o'clock on Wednesday evening, 

I suppose by the time you had got the 

letter. The Dr. did not think it was 

croup till late on Tuesday night, and all 

that Medical aid could prescribe was done, 

but the Dr. had no hope after he saw 

that the croup was confirmed, and hard 

indeed would the heart have been that 
36 






WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

would not have melted at seeing what the 
dear little creature suffered all Wednesday 
until the feeble frame was quite worn out. 
She was quite sensible till within 2 hours 
of her death, and then she sunk quite 
low till the vital spark fled, and all medi- 
cine that she got she took with the greatest 
readiness, as if apprehensive they would 
make her well. I cannot well describe 
my feelings on the occasion. I thought 
that the fountain head of my tears had 
now been dried up, but I have been mis- 
taken, for I must confess that the briny 
rivulets descended fast on my furrowed 
cheeks, she was such a winning Child, and 
had such a regard for me and always came 
and told me all her little things, and as 
she was now speaking, some of her little 
prattle was very taking, and the lively 
images of these things intrude themselves 
more into my mind than they should do, 
37 



MARGARET OGILVY 

but there is allowance for moderate grief 

on such occasions. But when I am telling 

you of my own grief and sorrow, I know 

not what to say of the bereaved Mother, 

she hath not met with anything in this 

world before that hath gone so near the 

quick with her. She had no handling of the 

last one as she was not able at the time, 

for she only had her once in her arms, and 

her affections had not time to be so fairly 

entwined around her. I am much afraid 

that she will not soon if ever get over this 

trial. Although she was weakly before, 

yet she was pretty well recovered, but this 

hath not only affected her mind but her 

body is so much affected that she is not 

well able to sit so long as her bed is 

making and hath scarcely tasted meat 

[i.e. food] since Monday night, and till 

some time is elapsed we cannot say how 

she may be. There is none that is not a 
38 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

parent themselves that can fully sym- 
pathise with one in such a state. David 
is much affected also, but it is not so well 
known on him, and the younger branches 
of the family are affected but it will be 
only momentary. But alas in all this vast 
ado, there is only the sorrow of the world 
which worketh death, O how gladdening 
would it be if we were in as great bitter- 
ness for sin as for the loss of a first-born. 
O how unfitted persons or families is for 
trials who knows not the divine art of 
casting all their cares upon the Lord, and 
what multitudes are there that when 
earthly comforts is taken away, may 
well say what have I more ? all their 
delight is placed in some one thing or 
another in the world, and who can blame 
them for unwillingly parting with what 
they esteem their chief good. O that we 

were wise to lay up treasure for the time 
39 



MARGARET OGILVY 

of need, for it is truly a solemn affair to 
enter the lists with the king of terrors. 
It is strange that the living lay the things 
so little to heart until they have to engage 
in that war where there is no discharge. 

that my head were waters and mine 
eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep 
day and night for my own and others* 
stupidity in this great matter. O for 
grace to do every day work in its proper 
time and to live above the tempting 
cheating train of earthly things. The 
rest of the family are moderately well. 

1 have been for some days worse than 1 

have been for 8 months past, but I may 

soon get better, I am in the same way 

I have often been in before, but there is 

no security for it always being so, for 1 

know that it cannot be far from the time 

when I will be one of those that once 

were. I have no other news to send 
40 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

you, and as little heart for them. I hope 
you will take the earliest opportunity of 
writing that you can, and be particular 
as regards Margaret, for she requires 
consolation/ 

He died exactly a week after writing 
this letter, but my mother was to live 
for another forty-four years. And joys 
of a kind never shared in by him were 
to come to her so abundantly, so long 
drawn out that, strange as it would have 
seemed to him to know it, her fuller 
life had scarce yet begun. And with 
the joys were to come their sweet, fright- 
ened comrades, pain and grief, again she 
was to be touched to the quick, again 
and again to be so ill that 'she is in 
life, we can say no more,* but still she 
had attendants very 'forward' to help 
her, some of them unborn in her father's 

time. 

41 



MARGARET OGILVY 

She told me everything, and so my 
memories of our little red town are col- 
oured by her memories. I knew it as it 
had been for generations, and suddenly 
I saw it change, and the transformation 
could not fail to strike a boy, for these 
first years are the most impressionable 
(nothing that happens after we are twelve 
matters very much) ; they are also the 
most vivid years when we look back, and 
more vivid the farther we have to look, 
until, at the end, what lies between bends 
like a hoop, and the extremes meet. But 
though the new town is to me a glass 
through which I look at the old, the people 
I see passing up and down these wynds, sit- 
ting, night-capped, on their barrow-shafts, 
hobbling in their blacks to church on 
Sunday, are less those I saw in my child- 
hood than their fathers and mothers who 

did these things in the same way when my 
42 



WHAT SHE HAD BEEN 

mother was young. I cannot picture the 
place without seeing her, as a Uttle girl, 
come to the door of a certain house and 
beat her bass against the gav le-end, or 
there is a wedding to-night, and the carriage 
with the white-eared horse Is sent for a 
maiden in pale blue, whose bonnet-strings 
tie beneath the chin. 



43 



CHAPTER III 

WHAT I SHOULD BE 

My mother was a great reader, and with 
ten minutes to spare before the starch 
was ready would begin the ' Decline and 
Fall * — and finish it, too, that winter. 
Foreign words in the text annoyed her 
and made her bemoan her want of a 
classical education — she had only attended 
a Dame's school during some easy months 
— but she never passed the foreign words 
by until their meaning was explained to 
her, and when next she and they met it 
was as acquaintances, which I think was 
clever of her. One of her delights was to 
learn from me scraps of Horace, and then 
44 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

bring them into her conversation with 
' colleged men/ I have come upon her in 
lonely places, such as the stair-head or 
the east room, muttering these quotations 
aloud to herself, and I well remember how 
she would say to the visitors, ' Ay, ay, it *s 
very true, Doctor, but as you know, " Eheu 
fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur 
anni," ' or ' Sal, Mr. so and so, my lassie is 
thriving well, but would it no be more to 
the point to say " O mater, pulchra filia 
pulchrior " ? ' which astounded them very 
much if she managed to reach the end 
without being flung, but usually she had 
a fit of laughing in the middle, and so 
they found her out. 

Biography and exploration were her 
favourite reading, for choice the biography 
of men who had been good to their 
mothers, and she liked the explorers to be 
alive so that she could shudder at the 
45 



MARGARET OGILVY 

thought of their venturing forth again, 
but though she expressed a hope that they 
would have the sense to stay at home 
henceforth, she gleamed with admiration 
when they disappointed her. In later 
days I had a friend who was an African 
explorer, and she was in two minds about 
him ; he was one of the most engrossing 
of mortals to her, she admired him pro- 
digiously, pictured him at the head of his 
caravan, now attacked by savages, now by 
wild beasts, and adored him for the uneasy 
hours he gave her, but she was also afraid 
that he wanted to take me with him, and 
then she thought he should be put down 
by, law. Explorers* mothers also interested 
her very much ; the books might tell her 
nothing about them, but she could create 
them for herself and wring her hands in 
sympathy with them when they had got 

no news of him for six months. Yet there 
46 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

were times when she grudged him to 
them — as the day when he returned 
victorious. Then what was before her 
eyes was not the son coming marching 
home again but an old woman peering for 
him round the window curtain and trying 
not to look uplifted. The newspaper 
reports would be about the son, but my 
mother's comment was ' She 's a proud 
woman this night.* 

We read many books together when I 
was a boy, ' Robinson Crusoe ' being the 
first (and the second), and the ' Arabian 
Nights ' should have been the next, for 
we got it out of the library (a penny for 
three days), but on discovering that they 
were nights when we had paid for knights 
we sent that volume packing, and I have 
curled my lips at it ever since. 'The 
Pilgrim's Progress ' we had in the house 

(it was as common a possession as a 
47 



MARGARET OGILVY 

dresser-head), and so enamoured of it was || 

I that I turned our garden into sloughs 
of Despond, with pea-sticks to represent 
Christian on his travels and a bufFet-stool I 

for his burden, but when I dragged my 
mother out to see my handiwork she was 
scared, and I felt for days, with a certain 
elation, that I had been a dark character. 
Besides reading every book we could hire 
or borrow I also bought one now and 
again, and while buying (it was the occu- 
pation of weeks) I read, standing at the 
counter, most of the other books in the 
shop, which is perhaps the most exquisite 
way of reading. And I took in a maga- 
zine called ' Sunshine,* the most delicious 
periodical, I am sure, of any day. It cost 
a halfpenny or a penny a month, and 
always, as I fondly remember, had a con- 
tinued tale about the dearest girl, who 

sold water-cress, which is a dainty not 
48 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

grown and I suppose never seen in my 
native town. This romantic little creature 
took such hold of my imagination that I 
cannot eat water-cress even now without 
emotion. I lay in bed wondering what 
she would be up to in the next number ; I 
have lost trout because when they nibbled 
my mind was wandering with her ; my 
early life was embittered by her not arriv- 
ing regularly on the first of the month. I 
know not whether it was owing to her 
loitering on the way one month to an extent 
flesh and blood could not bear, or because 
we had exhausted the penny library, but 
on a day I conceived a glorious idea, or it 
was put into my head by my mother, then 
desirous of making progress with her 
new clouty hearth-rug. The notion was 
nothing short of this, why should I not 
write the tales myself? I did write them 

— in the garret — but they by no means 
4 49 



MARGARET OGILVY 

helped her to get on with her work, for 
when I finished a chapter I bounded 
downstairs to read it to her, and so short 
were the chapters, so ready was the pen, 
that I was back with new manuscript 
before another clout had been added to 
the rug. Authorship seemed, like her 
bannock-baking, to consist of running 
between two points. They were all tales 
of adventure (happiest is he who writes of 
adventure), no characters were allowed 
within if I knew their like in the flesh, the 
scene lay in unknown parts, desert islands, 
enchanted gardens, with knights (none of 
your nights) on black chargers, and round 
the first corner a lady selling water-cress. 

At twelve or thereabout I put the literary 
calling to bed for a time, having gone to 
a school where cricket and football were 
more esteemed, but during the year before 
I went to the university, it woke up 
50 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

and I wrote great part of a three-volume 
novel. The publisher replied that the 
sum for which he would print it was a 
hundred and — however, that was not the 
important point (I had sixpence) : where 
he stabbed us both was in writing that he 
considered me a 'clever lady/ I replied 
stiffly that I was a gentleman, and since 
then I have kept that manuscript con- 
cealed. I looked through it lately, and, 
oh, but it is dull. 1 defy any one to 
read it. 

The malignancy of publishers, however, 
could not turn me back. From the day 
on which I first tasted blood in the garret 
my mind was made up ; there could be 
no hum-dreadful-drum profession for me ; 
literature was my game. It was not 
highly thought of by those who wished 
me well. I remember being asked by two 

maiden ladies, about the time I left the 
51 



MARGARET OGILVY 

university, what I was to be, and when I 
replied brazenly, ' An author,' they flung 
up their hands, and one exclaimed re- 
proachfully, ' And you an M.A. ! ' My 
mother's views at first were not dissimilar ; 
for long she took mine jestingly as some- 
thing I would grow out of, and afterwards 
they hurt her so that I tried to give them 
up. To be a minister — that she thought 
was among the fairest prospects, but she 
was a very ambitious woman, and some- 
times she would add, half scared at her 
appetite, that there were ministers who 
had become professors, ' but it was not 
canny to think of such things/ 

I had one person only on my side, an old 
tailor, one of the fullest men I have known, 
and quite the best talker. He was a 
bachelor (he told me all that is to be 
known about woman), a lean man, pallid 
of face, his legs drawn up when he walked 

$2 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

as if he was ever carrying something in 
his lap ; his walks were of the shortest, 
from the tea-pot on the hob to the board 
on which he stitched, from the board to' 
the hob, and so to bed. He might have 
gone out had the idea struck him, but in 
the years 1 knew him, the last of his 
brave life, I think he was only in the open 
twice, when he ' flitted * — changed his 
room for another hard by. I did not see 
him make these journeys, but I seem to 
see him now, and he is somewhat dizzy 
in the odd atmosphere ; in one hand he 
carries a box-iron, he raises the other, 
wondering what this is on his head, it is 
a hat ; a faint smell of singed cloth goes 
by with him. This man had heard of my 
set of photographs of the poets and 
asked for a sight of them, which led to 
our first meeting. I remember how he 

spread them out on his board, and after 
53 



MARGARET OGILVY 

looking long at them, turned his gaze on 
me and said solemnly, 

« What can I do to be for ever known. 
And make the age to come my own ? ' 

These lines of Cowley were new to me, 
but the sentiment was not new, and I 
marvelled how the old tailor could see 
through me so well. So it was strange to 
me to discover presently that he had not 
been thinking of me at all, but of his own 
young days, when that couplet sang in 
his head, and he, too, had thirsted to set 
off for Grub Street, but was afraid, and 
while he hesitated old age came, and then 
Death, and found him grasping a box- 
iron. 

I hurried home with the mouthful, but 
neighbours had dropped in, and this was 
for her ears only, so I drew her to the 

stair, and said imperiously, 
54 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

*What can I do to be for ever known. 
And make the age to come my own ? ' 

It was an odd request for which to draw 
her from a tea-table, and she must have 
been surprised, but I think she did not 
laugh, and in after years she would repeat 
the lines fondly, with a flush on her soft 
face. ' That is the kind you would like to 
be yourself! * we would say in jest to her, 
and she would reply almost passionately, 
' No, but I would be windy of being his 
mother/ It is possible that she could 
have been his mother had that other son 
lived, he might have managed it from 
sheer love of her, but for my part I can 
smile at one of those two figures on the 
stair now, having long given up the dream 
of being for ever known, and seeing my- 
self more akin to my friend, the tailor, for 
as he was found at the end on his board, 
so I hope shall I be found at my hand- 
55 



MARGARET OGILVY 

loom, doing honestly the work that suits 

me best. Who shall know so well as I 

that it is but a handloom compared to the 

great guns that reverberate through the 

age to come ? But she who stood with 

me on the stair that day was a very simple 

woman, accustomed all her life to making 

the most of small things, and I weaved 

sufficiently well to please her, which has 

been my only steadfast ambition since I 

was a little boy. 

Not less than mine became her desire 

that I should have my way — but, ah, the 

iron seats in that Park of horrible repute, 

and that bare room at the top of many 

flights of stairs ! While I was away at 

college she drained all available libraries 

for books about those who go to London 

to live by the pen, and they all told the 

same shuddering tale. London, which 

she never saw, was to her a monster that 
56 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

licked up country youths as they stepped 

from the train ; there were the garrets in 

which they sat abject, and the park seats 

where they passed the night. Those park 

seats were the monster's glaring eyes to 

her, and as I go by them now she is 

nearer to me than when I am in any other 

part of London. I daresay that when 

night comes, this Hyde Park which is so 

gay by day, is haunted by the ghosts of 

many mothers, who run, wild-eyed, from 

seat to seat, looking for their sons. 

But if we could dodge those dreary seats 

she longed to see me try my luck, and I 

sought to exclude them from the picture 

by drawing maps of London with Hyde 

Park left out. London was as strange 

to me as to her, but long before I was 

shot upon it I knew it by maps, and drew 

them more accurately than I could draw 

them now. Many a time she and I took 
57 



MARGARET OGILVY 

our jaunt together through the map, and 
were most gleeful, popping into telegraph 
offices to wire my father and sister that we 
should not be home till late, winking to 
my books in lordly shop-windows, lunch- 
ing at restaurants (and remembering not 
to call it dinner), saying, 'How do ? ' to 
Mr. Alfred Tennyson when we passed him 
in Regent Street, calling at publishers' 
offices for a cheque, when ' Will you take 
care of it, or shall I ? ' I asked gaily, and 
she would be certain to reply, ' I 'm think- 
ing we 'd better take it to the bank and 
get the money,* for she always felt surer 
of money than of cheques, so to the bank 
we went (' Two tens, and the rest in 
gold*), and thence straightway (by cab) to 
the place where you buy sealskin coats 
for middling old ladies. But ere the 
laugh was done the park would come 

through the map like a blot. 
58 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

' If you could only be sure of as much 
as would keep body and soul together/ 
my mother would say with a sigh. 

^ With something over, mother, to send 
to you/ 

' You couldna expect that at the start.' 

The wench I should have been courting 
now was journalism, that grisette of litera- 
ture who has a smile and a hand for all 
beginners, welcoming them at the thres- 
hold, teaching them so much that is worth 
knowing, introducing them to the other 
lady whom they have worshipped from 
afar, showing them even how to woo her, 
and then bidding them a bright God- 
speed — he were an ingrate who, having 
had her joyous companionship, no longer 
flings her a kiss as they pass. But though 
she bears no ill-will when she is jilted, 
you must serve faithfully while you are 

hers, and you must seek her out and make 
59 



MARGARET OGILVY 

much of her, and, until you can rely on 

her good-nature (note this), not a word 

about the other lady. When at last she 

took me in I grew so fond of her that I 

called her by the other's name, and even 

now I think at times that there was more 

fun in the little sister, but I began by 

wooing her with contributions that were 

all misfits. In an old book I find columns 

of notes about works projected at this 

time, nearly all to consist of essays on 

deeply uninteresting subjects; the lightest 

was to be a volume on the older satirists, 

beginning with Skelton and Tom Nash — 

the half of that manuscript still lies in a 

dusty chest — the only story was about 

Mary Queen of Scots, who was also the 

subject of many unwritten papers. Queen 

Mary seems to have been luring me to my 

undoing ever since I saw Holyrood, and I 

have a horrid fear that I may write that 
60 



WHAT I SHOULD BE 

novel yet. That anything could be written 
about my native place never struck me. 
We had read somewhere that a novelist 
is better equipped than most of his trade 
if he knows himself and one woman, and my 
mother said, ' You know yourself, for every- 
body must know himself* (there never was 
a woman who knew less about herself than 
she), and she would add dolefully, ^ But I 
doubt I 'm the only woman you know well.' 

^ Then I must make you my heroine,' 
I said lightly. 

' A gey auld-farrant-like heroine ! ' she 
said, and we both laughed at the notion — 
so little did we read the future. 

Thus it is obvious what were my qualifi- 
cations when I was rashly engaged as 
a leader-writer (it was my sister who saw 
the advertisement) on an English pro- 
vincial paper. At the moment I was as 

uplifted as the others, for the chance had 
6i 



MARGARET OGILVY 

come at last, with what we all regarded 
as a prodigious salary, but I was wanted 
in the beginning of the week, and it 
suddenly struck me that the leaders were 
the one thing I had always skipped. 
Leaders ! How were they written ? what 
were they about? My mother was al- 
ready sitting triumphant among my socks, 
and I durst not let her see me quak- 
ing. I retired to ponder, and presently 
she came to me with the daily paper. 
Which were the leaders ? she wanted to 
know, so evidently I could get no help 
from her. Had she any more newspapers ? 
I asked, and after rummaging, she pro- 
duced a few with which her boxes had 
been lined. Others, very dusty, came 
from beneath carpets, and lastly a sooty 
bundle was dragged down the chimney. 
Surrounded by these I sat down, and 

studied how to become a journalist. 
62 



CHAPTER IV 

AN EDITOR 

A DEVOUT lady, to whom some friend had 
presented one of my books, used to say 
when asked how she was getting on with 
it, ^ Sal, it 's dreary, weary, uphill work, but 
I Ve wrastled through with tougher jobs 
in my time, and, please God, I '11 wrastle 
through with this one/ It was in this spirit 
I fear, though she never told me so, that my 
mother wrestled for the next year or more 
with my leaders, and indeed I was always 
genuinely sorry for the people I saw read- 
ing them. In my spare hours I was trying 
journalism of another kind and sending it 
to London, but nearly eighteen months 
elapsed before there came to me, as un- 



MARGARET OGILVY 

looked for as a telegram, the thought that 
there was something quaint about my 
native place. A boy who found that a 
knife had been put into his pocket in the 
night could not have been more surprised. 
A few days afterwards I sent my mother 
a London evening paper with an article 
entitled ' An Auld Licht Community/ and 
they told me that when she saw the head- 
ing she laughed, because there was some- 
thing droll to her in the sight of the words 
Auld Licht in print. For her, as for me, 
that newspaper was soon to have the face of 
a friend. To this day I never pass its pla- 
cards in the street without shaking it by 
the hand, and she used to sew its pages 
together as lovingly as though they were 
a child's frock ; but let the truth be told, 
when she read that first article she be- 
came alarmed, and fearing the talk of the 

town, hid the paper from all eyes. For 
64 



AN EDITOR 

some time afterwards, while I proudly 
pictured her showing this and similar arti- 
cles to all who felt an interest in me, she 
was really concealing them fearfully in a 
bandbox on the garret stair. And she 
wanted to know by return of post whether 
I was paid for these articles just as I was 
paid for real articles ; when she heard 
that I was paid better, she laughed again 
and had them out of the bandbox for 
re-reading, and it cannot be denied that 
she thought the London editor a fine 
fellow but slightly soft. 

When I sent off that first sketch I 
thought I had exhausted the subject, but 
our editor wrote that he would like some- 
thing more of the same, so I sent him a 
marriage, and he took it, and then I tried 
him with a funeral, and he took it, and 
really it began to look as if we had him. 

Now my mother might have been discov- 
5 65 



MARGARET OGILVY 

ered, in answer to certain excited letters, 
flinging the bundle of undarned socks from 
her lap, and * going in for literature ' ; she 
was racking her brains, by request, for 
memories I might convert into articles, and 
they came to me in letters which she dic- 
tated to my sisters. How well I could 
hear her saying between the lines : ' But 
the editor-man will never stand that, it's 

perfect blethers ' ' By this post it must 

go, I tell you ; we must take the editor when 
he 's hungry — we canna be blamed for it, 
can we ? he prints them of his free will, so 
the wite is his ' ' But I 'm near terri- 
fied. — If London folk reads them we *re 
done for.* And I was sounded as to the 
advisabihty of sending him a present of a 
lippie of short-bread, which was to be her 
crafty way of ^getting round him. By this 
time, though my mother and I were hun- 
dreds of miles apart, you may picture us 
66 



AN EDITOR 

waving our hands to each other across coun- 
try, and shouting ' Hurrah ! * You may 
also picture the editor in his office thinking 
he was behaving like a shrewd man of 
business, and unconscious that up in the 
north there was an elderly lady chuckling 
so much at him that she could scarcely 
scrape the potatoes. 

I was now able to see my mother again, 
and the park seats no longer loomed so 
prominent in our map of London. Still, 
there they were, and it was with an effort 
that she summoned up courage to let me 
go. She feared changes, and who could 
tell that the editor would continue to be 
kind ? Perhaps when he saw me — 

She seemed to be very much afraid of 

his seeing me, and this, I would point out, 

was a reflection on my appearance or my 

manner. 

No, what she meant was that I looked 
67 



MARGARET OGILVY 

so young, and — and that would take him 
aback, for had I not written as an aged 
man ? 

* But he knows my age, mother/ 

' I 'm glad of that, but maybe he wouldna 
like you'*^when he saw you/ 

* Oh, it is my manner, then ! ' 
' I dinna say that, but ' 

Here my sister would break in : ' The 
short and the long of it is just this, she 
thtnks nobody has such manners as her- 
self Can you deny it, you vain woman ? * 

My mother would deny it vigorously. 

' You stand there,* my sister would say 
with affected scorn, ' and tell me you don't 
think you could get the better of that man 
quicker than any of us ? ' 

' Sal, I 'm thinking I could manage 
him,' says my mother, with a chuckle. 

' How would you set about it ? ' 

Then my mother would begin to laugh. 
68 



AN EDITOR 

* I would find out first if he had a family, 
and then I would say they were the finest 
family in London/ 

'Yes, that is just what you would do, 
you cunning woman ! But if he has no 
family ? ' 

' I would say what great men editors are ! ' 

* He would see through you/ 

' Not he ! ' J 

'You don't understand that what im- 
poses on common folk would never hood- 
wink an editor/ 

' That 's where you are wrong. Gentle 
or simple, stupid or clever, the men are all 
alike in the hands of a woman that flatters 
them/ 

' Ah, I 'm sure there are better ways of 
getting round an editor than that/ 

' I daresay there are,' my mother would 

say with conviction, ' but if you try that 

plan you will never need to try another/ 
69 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' How artful you are, mother — you with 
your soft face ! Do you not think shame ? ' 

* Pooh ! ' says my mother brazenly. 

' I can see the reason why you are so 
popular with men/ 

' Ay, you can see it, but they never will/ 

* Well, how would you dress yourself if 
you were going to that editor's office ? * 

^ Of course I would wear my silk and 
my Sabbath bonnet/ 

' It is you who are shortsighted now, 
mother. I tell you, you would manage 
him better if you just put on your old 
grey shawl and one of your bonny white 
mutches, and went in half smiling and 
half timid and said, " I am the mother of 
him that writes about the Auld Lichts, 
and I want you to promise that he will 
never have to sleep in the open air." ' 

But my mother would shake her head 

at this, and reply almost hotly, ^ I tell you 
70 



AN EDITOR 

if I ever go into that man's office, I go in 
silk/ 

I wrote and asked the editor if I should 
come to London, and he said No, so I 
went, laden with charges from my mother 
to walk in the middle of the street (they 
jump out on you as you are turning a 
corner), never to venture forth after sun- 
set, and always to lock up everything (I 
who could never lock up anything, except 
my heart in company). Thanks to this 
editor, for the others would have nothing 
to say to me though I battered on all 
their doors, she was soon able to sleep 
at nights without the dread that I should 
be waking presently with the iron-work of 
certain seats figured on my person, and 
what relieved her very much was that I 
had begun to write as if Auld Lichts were 
not the only people I knew of. So long as 

I confined myself to them she had a haunt- 
71 



MARGARET OGILVY 

ing fear that, even though the editor re- 
mained blind to his best interests, some- 
thing would one day go crack within me (as 
the mainspring of a watch breaks) and my 
pen refuse to write for evermore. ' Ay, I 
like the article brawly,' she would say 
timidly, ' but I 'm doubting it 's the last — 
I always have a sort of terror the new one 
may be the last,' and if many days elapsed 
before the arrival of another article her 
face would say mournfully, ' The blow has 
fallen — he can think of nothing more to 
write about/ If I ever shared her fears I 
never told her so, and the articles that 
were not Scotch grew in number until 
there were hundreds of them, all carefully 
preserved by her : they were the only thing 
in the house that, having served one pur- 
pose, she did not convert into something 
else, yet they could give her uneasy 

moments. This was because I nearly 
72 



AN EDITOR 

always assumed a character when I wrote ; 
I must be a country squire, or an under- 
graduate, or a butler, or a member of the 
House of Lords, or a dowager, or a lady 
called Sweet Seventeen, or an engineer in 
India, else was my pen clogged, and though 
this gave my mother certain fearful joys, 
causing her to laugh unexpectedly (so far 
as my articles were concerned she nearly 
always laughed in the wrong place), it 
also scared her. Much to her amuse- 
ment the editor continued to prefer the 
Auld Licht papers, however, as was 
proved (to those who knew him) by his 
way of thinking that the others would 
pass as they were, while he sent these 
back and asked me to make them better. 
Here again she came to my aid. I had 
said that the row of stockings were hung 
on a string by the fire, which was a recol- 
lection of my own, but she could tell 
73 



MARGARET OGILVY 

me whether they were hung upside down. 
She became quite skilful at sending or 
giving me (for now I could be with her 
half the year) the right details, but still 
she smiled at the editor, and in her gay 
moods she would say, ' I was fifteen when 
I got my first pair of elastic-sided boots. 
Tell him my charge for this important 
news is two pounds ten.' 

^ Ay, but though we 're doing well, it 's 
no the same as if they were a book with 
your name on it.' So the ambitious woman 
would say with a sigh, and I did my best 
to turn the Auld Licht sketches into a 
book with my name on it. Then perhaps 
we understood most fully how good a 
friend our editor had been, for just as I 
had been able to find no well-known 
magazine — and I think I tried all — which 
would print any article or story about the 
poor of my native land, so now the pub- 
74 



AN EDITOR 

Ushers, Scotch and English, refused to 
accept the book as a gift. I was willing 
to present it to them, but they would 
have it in no guise ; there seemed to be 
a blight on everything that was Scotch. 
I daresay we sighed, but never were collabo- 
rators more prepared for rejection, and 
though my mother might look wistfully 
at the scorned manuscript at times and 
murmur, ' You poor cold little crittur shut 
away in a drawer, are you dead or just 
sleeping ? ' she had still her editor to say 
grace over. And at last publishers, suffi- 
ciently daring and far more than sufficiently 
generous, were found for us by a dear 
friend, who made one woman very ' up- 
lifted.' He also was an editor, and had 
as large a part in making me a writer of 
books as the other in determining what 
the books should be about. 

Now that I was an author I must get 
75 



MARGARET OGILVY 

into a club. But you should have heard 
my mother on clubs ! She knew of none 
save those to which you subscribe a pit- 
tance weekly in anticipation of rainy days, 
and the London clubs were her scorn. 
Often I heard her on them — she raised 
her voice to make me hear, whichever 
room I might be in, and it was when 
she was sarcastic that I skulked the 
most : ' Thirty pounds is what he will 
have to pay the first year, and ten 
pounds a year after that. You think 
it 's a lot o* siller ? Oh, no, you 're 
mistaken — it 's nothing ava. For the 
third part of thirty pounds you could 
rent a four-roomed house, but what is 
a four-roomed house, what is thirty 
pounds, compared to the glory of being 
a member of a club ! Where does the 
glory come in ? Sal, you needna ask 

me, I 'm just a doited auld stock that 
76 



AN EDITOR 

never set foot in a club, so it's little 
I ken about glory. But I may tell 
you if you bide in London and canna 
become member of a club, the best you 
can do is to tie a rope round your neck 
and slip out of the world. What use are 
they ? Oh, they 're terrible useful. You 
see it doesna do for a man in London to 
eat his dinner in his lodgings. Other 
men shake their heads at him. He maun 
away to his club if he is to be respected. 
Does he get good dinners at the club ? 
Oh, they cow ! You get no common 
beef at clubs ; there is a manzy of differ- 
ent things all sauced up to be unlike 
themsels. Even the potatoes daurna look 
like potatoes. If the food in a club looks 
like what it is, the members run about, 
flinging up their hands and crying, " Woe 
is me ! " Then this is another thing, 

you get your letters sent to the club 
77 



MARGARET OGILVY 

instead of to your lodgings. You see you 
would get them sooner at your lodgings, 
and you may have to trudge weary miles 
to the club for them, but that 's a great ad- 
vantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it 
no ? I wonder they can do it at the price/ 

My wisest policy was to remain down- 
stairs when these withering blasts were 
blowing, but probably I went up in self- 
defence. 

' I never saw you so pugnacious before, 
mother.' 

' Oh,' she would reply promptly, ' you 
canna expect me to be sharp in the uptake 
when I am no a member of a club.' 

' But the difficulty is in becoming a 
member. They are very particular about 
whom they elect, and I daresay I shall 
not get in.' 

* Well, I 'm but a poor crittur (not 
being member of a club), but I think I 
78 



AN EDITOR 

can tell you to make your mind easy on 
that head. You '11 get in, I *se uphaud 
— and your thirty pounds will get in, too/ 

' If I get in it will be because the editor 
is supporting me.' 

'It's the first ill thing I ever heard 
of him.' 

' You don't think he is to get any of the 
thirty pounds, do you ? ' 

' 'Deed if I did I should be better 
pleased, for he has been a good friend to 
us, but what maddens me is that every 
penny of it should go to those bare-faced 
scoundrels.' 

* What bare-faced scoundrels ? ' 
' Them that have the club.' 

' But all the members have the club 
between them.' 

' Havers ! I 'm no to be catched with 
chaff.' 

* But don't you believe me ? ' 

79 



MARGARET OGILVY 

^ I believe they Ve filled your head with 
their stories till you swallow whatever 
they tell you. If the place belongs to the 
members, why do they have to pay thirty 
pounds ? ' 

' To keep it going/ 

' They dinna have to pay for their 
dinners, then ? * 

^ Oh, yes, they have to pay extra for 
dinner/ 

^ And a gey black price, I 'm thinking/ 

^ Well, five or six shillings/ 

' Is that all ? Losh, it 's nothing. I 
wonder they dinna raise the price.* 

Nevertheless my mother was of a sex 

that scorned prejudice, and, dropping 

sarcasm, she would at times cross-examine 

me as if her mind was not yet made up. 

* Tell me this, if you were to fall ill, would 

you be paid a weekly allowance out of the 

club?* 

80 



AN EDITOR 

No, it was not that kind of club. 

^ I see. Well, I am just trying to find 
out what kind of club it is. Do you get 
anything out of it for accidents ? ' 

Not a penny. 

' Anything at New Year's time ? * 

Not so much as a goose. 

^ Is there any one mortal thing you get 
free out of that club ? ' 

There was not one mortal thing. 

* And thirty pounds is what you pay for 
this ? ' 

If the committee elected me. 

' How many are in the committee ? ' 

About a dozen I thought. 

^ A dozen ! Ay, ay, that makes two 
pound ten apiece.' 

When I was elected I thought it wisdom 

to send my sister upstairs with the news. 

My mother was ironing, and made no 

comment, unless with the iron, which I 
6 8i 



MARGARET OGILVY 

could hear rattling more violently in its 
box. Presently I heard her laughing — 
at me undoubtedly, but she had recovered 
control over her face before she came down- 
stairs to congratulate me sarcastically. 
This was grand news, she said without a 
twinkle, and I must write and thank the 
committee, the noble critturs. I saw be- 
hind her mask, and maintained a digni- 
fied silence, but she would have another 
shot at me. ^ And tell them,' she said 
from the door, ' you were doubtful of being 
elected, but your auld mother had aye a 
mighty confidence they would snick you in.' 
I heard her laughing softly as she went up 
the stair, but though I had provided her 
with a joke I knew she was burning to tell 
the committee what she thought of them. 
Money, you see, meant so much to her, 
though even at her poorest she was the 

most cheerful giver. In the old . days, 
82 



AN EDITOR 

when the article arrived, she did not read 
it at once, she first counted the Hnes to 
discover what we should get for it — she 
and the daughter who was so dear to 
her had calculated the payment per line, 
and I remember once overhearing a dis- 
cussion between them about whether that 
sub-title meant another sixpence. Yes, 
she knew the value of money ; she had 
always in the end got the things she 
wanted, but now she could get them more 
easily, and it turned her simple life into 
a fairy tale. So often in those days she 
went down suddenly upon her knees ; we 
would come upon her thus, and go away 
noiselessly. After her death I found that 
she had preserved in a little box, with a 
photograph of me as a child, the en- 
velopes which had contained my first 
cheques. There was a little ribbon round 

them. 

83 



CHAPTER V 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 



I SHOULD like to call back a day of her 
life as it was at this time, when her spirit 
was as bright as ever and her hand as 
eager, but she was no longer able to do 
much work. It should not be difficult, 
for she repeated herself from day to day 
and yet did it with a quaint unreasonable- 
ness that was ever yielding fresh delight. 
Our love for her was such that we could 
easily tell what she would do in given 
circumstances, but she had always a new 
way of doing it. 

Well, with break of day she wakes and 
sits up in bed and is standing in the 

middle of the room. So nimble was she 
84 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

in the mornings (one of our troubles 
with her) that these three actions must 
be considered as one ; she is on the floor 
before you have time to count them. She 
has strict orders not to rise until her 
fire is lit, and having broken them there 
is a demure elation on her face. The 
question is what to do before she is 
caught and hurried to bed again. Her 
fingers are tingling to prepare the break- 
fast ; she would dearly love to black-lead 
the grate, but that might rouse her daugh- 
ter from whose side she has slipped so cun- 
ningly. She catches sight of the screen 
at the foot of the bed, and immediately 
her soft face becomes very determined. 
To guard her from draughts the screen 
had been brought here from the lordly 
east room, where it was of no use what- 
ever. But in her opinion it was too 
beautiful for use ; it belonged to the east 
85 



MARGARET OGILVY 

room, where she could take pleasant peeps 
at it ; she had objected to its removal, even 
become low-spirited. Now is her oppor- 
tunity. The screen is an unwieldly thing, 
but still as a mouse she carries it, and 
they are well under way when it strikes 
against the gas-bracket in the passage. 
Next moment a reproachful hand arrests 
her. She is challenged with being out of 
bed, she denies it — standing in the 
passage. Meekly or stubbornly she re- 
turns to bed, and it is no satisfaction to 
you that you can say, ' Well, well, of all 
the women ! ' and so on, or ' Surely you 
knew that the screen was brought here to 
protect you,' for she will reply scornfully, 
' Who was touching the screen ? ' 

By this time I have awakened (I am 
through the wall) and join them anxiously : 
so often has my mother been taken ill in 

the night that the slightest sound from 
86 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

her room rouses the house. She is in 
bed again, looking as if she had never 
been out of it, but I know her and hsten 
sternly to the tale of her misdoings. She 
is not contrite. Yes, maybe she did pro- 
mise not to venture forth on the cold 
floors of daybreak, but she had risen for 
a moment only, and we just t'neaded her 
with our talk about draughts — there were 
no such things as draughts in her young 
days — and it is more than she can do (here 
she again attempts to rise but we hold 
her down) to lie there and watch that 
beautiful screen being spoilt. I reply 
that the beauty of the screen has ever 
been its miserable defect : ho, there ! for 
a knife with which to spoil its beauty and 
make the bedroom its fitting home. As 
there is no knife handy, my foot will do ; I 
raise my foot, and then — she sees that it 

is bare, she cries to me excitedly to go 
87 



MARGARET OGILVY 

back to bed lest I catch cold. For though, 
ever careless of herself, she will wander 
the house unshod, and tell us not to talk 
havers when we chide her, the sight of 
one of us similarly negligent rouses her 
anxiety at once. She is willing now to 
sign any vow if only I will take my bare 
feet back to bed, but probably she is soon 
after me in hers to make sure that I am 
nicely covered up. 

It is scarcely six o'clock, and we have 
all promised to sleep for another hour, 
but in ten minutes she is sure that eight 
has struck (house disgraced), or that if it 
has not, something is wrong with the 
clock. Next moment she is captured on 
her way downstairs to wind up the clock. 
So evidently we must be up and doing, 
and as we have no servant, my sister 
disappears into the kitchen, having first 

asked me to see that ' that woman ' . Hes 

88 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

still, and ' that woman ' calls out that she 
always does lie still, so what are we bleth- 
ering about ? 

She is up now, and dressed in her thick 
maroon wrapper ; over her shoulders (lest 
she should stray despite our watchfulness) 
is a shawl, not placed there by her own 
hands, and on her head a delicious mutch. 
O, that I could sing the paean of the 
white mutch (and the dirge of the elabo- 
rate black cap) from the day when she 
called witchcraft to her aid and made it 
out of snow-flakes, and the dear worn 
hands that washed it tenderly in a basin, 
and the starching of it, and the finger-iron 
for its exquisite frills that looked like curls 
of sugar, and the sweet bands with which 
it tied beneath the chin ! The honoured 
snowy mutch, how I love to see it smiling 
to me from the doors and windows of the 

poor ; it is always smiling — sometimes 
89 



MARGARET OGILVY 

may be a wavering wistful smile, as if a 
tear-drop lay hidden among the frills. A 
hundred times I have taken the character- 
less cap from my mother's head and put 
the mutch in its place and tied the bands 
beneath her chin, while she protested but 
was well pleased. For in her heart she 
knew what suited her best and would 
admit it, beaming, when I put a mirror 
into her hands and told her to look ; but 
nevertheless the cap cost no less than so 

and so, whereas Was that a knock at 

the door ? She is gone, to put on her 
cap ! 

She begins the day by the fireside with 
the New Testament in her hands, an old 
volume with its loose pages beautifully re- 
fixed, and its covers sewn and resewn by 
her, so that you would say it can never 
fall to pieces. It is mine now, and to me 

the black threads with which she stitched 
90 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

it are as part of the contents. Other 
books she read in the ordinary manner, 
but this one differently, her lips moving 
with each word as if she were reading 
aloud, and her face very solemn. The 
Testament lies open on her lap long after 
she has ceased to read, and the expression 
of her face has not changed. 

I have seen her reading other books 
early in the day but never without a guilty 
look on her face, for she thought reading 
was scarce respectable until night had 
come. She spends the forenoon in what 
she calls doing nothing, which may consist 
in stitching so hard that you would swear 
she was an over-worked seamstress at it 
for her life, or you will find her on a table 
with nails in her mouth, and anon she 
has to be chased from the garret (she has 
suddenly decided to change her curtains), 
or she is under the bed searching for 
91 



MARGARET OGILVY 

band-boxes and asking sternly where we 
have put that bonnet. On the whole she 
is behaving in a most exemplary way 
to-day (not once have we caught her 
trying to go out into the washing-house), 
and we compliment her at dinner time, 
partly because she deserves it, and partly 
to make her think herself so good that 
she will eat something, just to maintain 
her new character. I question whether one 
hour of all her life was given to thoughts 
of food ; in her great days to eat seemed 
to her to be waste of time, and after- 
wards she only ate to boast of it, as 
something she had done to please us. 
She seldom remembered whether she had 
dined, but always presumed she had, and 
while she was telling me in all good faith 
what the meal consisted of, it might be 
brought in. When in London I had to 

hear daily what she was eating, and 
92 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

perhaps she had refused all dishes until 
they produced the pen and ink. These 
were flourished before her, and then she 
would say with a sigh, ' Tell him I am to 
eat an egg/ But they were not so easily 
deceived ; they waited, pen in hand, until 
the egg was eaten. 

She never ' went for a walk ' in her life. 
Many long trudges she had as a girl when 
she carried her father*s dinner in a flaggon 
to the country place where he was at 
work, but to walk with no end save the 
good of your health seemed a very droll 
proceeding to her. In her young days, 
she was positive, no one had ever gone for 
a walk, and she never lost the belief that 
it was an absurdity introduced by a new 
generation with too much time on their 
hands. That they enjoyed it she could 
not believe ; it was merely a form of show- 
ing off, and as they passed her window she 
93 



MARGARET OGILVY 

would remark to herself with blasting 
satire, ^ Ay, Jeames, are you off for your 
walk ? ' and add fervently, ^ Rather you 
than me ! ' I was one of those who walked, 
and though she smiled, and might drop a 
sarcastic word when she saw me putting 
on my boots, it was she who had heated 
them in preparation for my going. The 
arrangement between us was that she 
should lie down until my return, and to 
ensure its being carried out I saw her 
in bed before I started, but with the 
bang of the door she would be at the 
window to watch me go : there is one 
spot on the road where a thousand times 
I have turned to wave my stick to her, 
while she nodded and smiled and kissed 
her hand to me. That kissing of the 
hand was the one English custom she had 
learned. 

In an hour or so I return, and perhaps 
94 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

find her in bed, according to promise, but 
still I am suspicious. The way to her 
detection is circuitous. 

' I '11 need to be rising now/ she says, 
with a yawn that may be genuine. 

' How long have you been in bed ? * 

' You saw me go.' 

' And then I saw you at the window. 
Did you go straight back to bed ? ' 

^ Surely I had that much sense.' 

' The truth ! ' 

' I might have taken a look at the clock 
first.' 

'It is a terrible thing to have a mother 
who prevaricates. Have you been lying 
down ever since I left ? ' 

' Thereabout.' 

' What does that mean exactly ? ' 

'OfFandon.' 

* Have you been to the garret ? ' 
/ What should I do in the garret ? ' 
95 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' But have you ? * 

* I might just have looked up the garret 
stair/ 

^You have been redding up the garret 
again ! * 

' Not what you could call a redd up/ 

' O, woman, woman, I believe yo^i have 
not been in bed at all ! * 

' You see me in it/ 

* My opinion is that you jumped into bed 
when you heard me open the door/ 

' Havers/ 

' Did you ? ' 

*No/ 

' Well, then, when you heard me at the 
gate ? ' 

' It might have been when I heard you 
at the gate/ 

As daylight goes she follows it with her 

sewing to the window, and gets another 

needleful out of it, as one may run after a 
96 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

departed visitor for a last word, but now 
the gas is lit, and no longer is it shameful 
to sit down to literature. If the book be 
a story by George Eliot or Mrs. Oliphant, 
her favourite ( and mine ) among women 
novelists, or if it be a Carlyle, and we 
move ooftly, she will read, entranced, for 
hours. Her delight in Carlyle was so 
well known that various good people 
would send her books that contaned a 
page about him ; she could *^iace her 
finger on any passage wanted in the 
biography as promptly as though sne 
were looking for some article in her own 
drawer, and given a date she was often 
able to tell you what they were doing in 
Cheyne Row that day. Carlyle, she de- 
cided, was not so much an ill man to 
live with as one who needed a deal of 
managing, but when I asked if she 

thought she could have managed him 
7 97 



MARGARET OGILVY 

she only replied with a modest smile that 
meant ^ Oh, no ! ' but had the face of 
' Sal, I would have liked to try.' 

One lady lent her some scores of 
Carlyle letters that have never been pub- 
lished, and crabbed was the writing, but 
though my mother liked to have our 
letters read aloud to her, she read every 
one of these herself, and would quote 
from them in her talk. Side by side 
with the Carlyle letters, which show him 
in his most gracious light, were many 
from his wife to a friend, and in one of 
these a romantic adventure is described — 
I quote from memory, and it is a poor 
memory compared to my mother's, which 
registered everything by a method of 
her own : ^ What might be the age of 
Bell Tibbits ? Well, she was born the 
week I bought the boiler, so she '11 be 

one-and-fifty (no less ! ) come Martin- 
98 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

mas/ Mrs. Carlyle had got into the 
train at a London station and was feel- 
ing very lonely, for the journey to 
Scotland lay before her and no one had 
come to see her off. Then, just as the 
train was starting, a man jumped into the 
carriage, to her regret until she saw his 
face, when, behold, they were old friends, 
and the last time they met (I forget how 
many years before) he had asked her to 
be his wife. He was very nice, and if 
I remember aright, saw her to her jour- 
ney's end, though he had intended to 
alight at some half-way place. I call this 
an adventure, and I am sure it seemed to 
my mother to be the most touching and 
memorable adventure that can come into a 
woman's life. ' You see he hadna forgot,* 
she would say proudly, as if this was a 
compliment in which all her sex could 

share, and on her old tender face shone 
99 



MARGARET OGILVY 

some of the elation with which Mrs. Car- 
lyle wrote that letter. 

But there were times, she held, when 
Carlyle must have made his wife a glorious 
woman. ' As when ? * I might inquire. 

' When she keeked in at his study door 
and said to herself, " The whole world is 
ringing with his fame, and he is my 
man ! " ' 

' And then,' I might point out, ^ he 
would roar to her to shut the door.* 

* Pooh,* said my mother, ' a man's roar 
is neither here nor there.* But her ver- 
dict as a whole was, ' I would rather have 
been his mother than his wife.* 

So we have got her into her chair with 
the Carlyles, and all is well. Further- 
more, ' to mak siccar,* my father has 
taken the opposite side of the fireplace 
and is deep in the latest five columns of 
Gladstone, who is his Carlyle. He is to 

lOO 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

see that she does not sHp away fired by 
a conviction, which suddenly over-rides 
her pages, that the kitchen is going to rack 
and ruin for want of her, and she is to 
recall him to himself should he put his 
foot in the fire and keep it there, forget- 
ful of all save his hero's eloquence. (We 
were a family who needed a deal of 
watching.) She is not interested in what 
Mr. Gladstone has to say ; indeed she 
could never be brought to look upon 
politics as of serious concern for grown 
folk (a class in which she scarcely included 
man), and she gratefully gave up reading 
* leaders ' the day I ceased to write them. 
But like want of reasonableness, a love 
for having the last word, want of humour 
and the like, politics were in her opinion 
a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and 
Gladstone was the name of the something 
which makes all our sex such queer 

lOI 



MARGARET OGILVY 

characters. She had a profound faith in 
him as an aid to conversation, and if there 
were silent men in the company would 
give him to them to talk about, precisely 
as she divided a cake among children. 
And then, with a motherly smile, she 
would leave them to gorge on him. 
But in the idolising of Gladstone she re- 
cognised, nevertheless, a certain inevita- 
bility, and would no more have tried to 
contend with it than to sweep a shadow 
off the floor. Gladstone was, and there 
was an end of it in her practical philo- 
sophy. Nor did she accept him coldly ; 
like a true woman she sympathised with 
those who suffered severely, and they 
knew it and took counsel of her in the 
hour of need. I remember one ardent 
Gladstonian who, as a general election 
drew near, was in sore straits indeed, for 

he disbelieved in Home Rule, and • yet 
1 02 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

how could he vote against ' Gladstone's 
man ' ? His distress was so real that it 
gave him a hang-dog appearance. He 
put his case gloomily before her, and 
until the day of the election she riddled 
him with sarcasm ; I think he only went 
to her because he found a mournful en- 
joyment in seeing a false Glads tonian 
tortured. 

It was all such plain-sailing for him, 
she pointed out; he did not like this 
Home Rule, and therefore he must vote 
against it. 

She put it pitiful clear, he replied with 
a groan. 

But she was like another woman to him 
when he appeared before her on his way 
to the poUing-booth. 

* This is a watery Sabbath to you, I *m 

thinking,' she said sympathetically, but 

without dropping her wires — for Home 
103 



MARGARET OGILVY 

Rule or no Home Rule that stocking- 
foot must be turned before twelve o'clock. 
A watery Sabbath means a doleful day, 
and ^A watery Sabbath it is/ he replied 
with feeling. A silence followed, broken 
only by the click of the wires. Now and 
again he would mutter, ' Ay, well, I '11 be 
going to vote — little did I think the day 
would come,' and so on, but if he rose it 
was only to sit down again, and at last 
she crossed over to him and said softly, 
(no sarcasm in her voice now), ' Away 
with you, and vote for Gladstone's man ! ' 
He jumped up and made off without a 
word, but from the east window we 
watched him strutting down the brae. 
I laughed, but she said * I 'm no sure that 
it*s a laughing matter,' and afterwards, 
' I would have liked fine to be that Glad- 
stone's mother.' 

It is nine o'clock now, a quarter past 
104 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

nine, half-past nine — all the same moment 
to me, for I am at a sentence that will 
not write. I know, though I can't hear, 
what my sister has gone upstairs to say- 
to my mother: 

' I was in at him at nine, and he said "In 
five minutes," so I put the steak on the 
brander, but I Ve been in thrice since 
then, and every time he says, "In fivQ 
minutes," and when I try to take the table 
cover off, he presses his elbows hard on 
it, and growls. His supper will be com- 
pletely spoilt.* 

' Oh, that weary writing ! ' 

^ I can do no more, mother, so you must 
come down and stop him.' 

' I have no power over him,' my mother 
says, but she rises smiling, and presently 
she is opening my door. 

* In five minutes ! ' I cry, but when I see 
that it is she I rise and put my arm round 



MARGARET OGILVY 

her. ^ What a full basket ! ' she says, 
looking at the waste-paper basket which 
contains most of my work of the night, 
and with a dear gesture she lifts up a 
torn page and kisses it. ' Poor thing,* she 
says to it, ' and you would have liked so 
fine to be printed ! ' and she puts her hand 
over my desk to prevent my writing more. 

^ In the last five minutes,' I begin, ' one 
can often do more than in the first hour.* 

' Many a time I 've said it in my young 
days,* she says slowly. 

' And proved it, too ! * cries a voice from 
the door, the voice of one who was prouder 
of her even than I ; it is true, and yet 
almost unbelievable, that any one could 
have been prouder of her than I. 

' But those days are gone,* my mother 

says solemnly, 'gone to come back no 

more. You *11 put by your work now, man, 

and have your supper, and then you *ll 
1 06 



A DAY OF HER LIFE 

come up and sit beside your mother for a 
whiley, for soon you '11 be putting her 
away in the kirk-yard/ 

I hear such a little cry from near the 
door. 

So my mother and I go up the stair 
together. ' We have changed places/ she 
says; 'that was just how I used to help 
you up, but I *m the bairn now.' 

She brings out the Testament again ; it 

was always lying within reach; it is the 

lock of hair she left me when she died. 

And when she has read for a long time 

she 'gives me a look/ as we say in the 

north, and I go out, to leave her alone 

with God. She had been but a child when 

her mother died, and so she fell early into 

the way of saying her prayers with no 

earthly listener. Often and often I have 

found her on her knees, but I always went 

softly away, closing the door. I never 
107 



MARGARET OGILVY 

heard her pray, but I know very well how 
she prayed, and that, when that door was 
shut, there was not a day in God's sight 
between the worn woman and the little 
child. 



io8 



CHAPTER VI 

HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

And sometimes I was her maid of all 
work. 

It is early morn, and my mother has 
come noiselessly into my room. I know 
it is she, though my eyes are shut, and I 
am only half awake. Perhaps I was dream- 
ing of her, for I accept her presence with- 
out surprise, as if in the awakening I had 
but seen her go out at one door to come 
in at another. But she is speaking to 
herself. 

^ I 'm sweer to waken him — I doubt he 

was working late — oh, that weary writing 

— no, I maunna waken him.' 
109 



MARGARET OGILVY 

I start up. She is wringing her hands. 
' What is wrong ? ' I cry, but I know before 
she answers. My sister is down with one 
of the headaches against which even she 
cannot fight, and my mother, who bears 
physical pain as if it were a comrade, is 
most woe-begone when her daughter is 
the sufferer. ' And she winna let me go 
down the stair to make a cup of tea for 
her,' she groans. 

' I will soon make the tea, mother.* 

' Will you ^ ' she says eagerly. It is 
what she has come to me for, but ' It is 
a pity to rouse you,* she says. 

' And I will take charge of the house 
to-day, and light the fires and wash the 
dishes ' 

' Na, oh no ; no, I couldna ask that of 
you, and you an author.* 

' It won't be the first time, mother, 

since I was an author.* 
no 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

' More like the fiftieth ! * she says al- 
most gleefully, so I have begun well, for 
to keep up her spirits is the great thing 
to-day. 

Knock at the door. It is the baker. 
I take in the bread, looking so sternly at 
him that he dare not smile. 

Knock at the door. It is the postman. 
(I hope he did not see that I had the Hd 
of the kettle in my other hand.) 

Furious knocking in a remote part. 
This means that the author is in the coal 
cellar. 

Anon I carry two breakfasts upstairs in 

triumph. I enter the bedroom like no 

mere humdrum son, but after the manner 

of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more 

about him. He had been my mother's 

one waiter, the only man-servant she ever 

came in contact with, and they had met 

in a Glasgow hotel which she was eager to 
III 



MARGARET OGILVY 

see, having heard of the monstrous things, 
and conceived them to resemble country- 
inns with another twelve bedrooms. I 
remember how she beamed — yet tried to 
look as if it was quite an ordinary experi- 
ence — when we alighted at the hotel door, 
but though she said nothing I soon read 
disappointment in her face. She knew 
how I was exulting in having her there, 
so would not say a word to damp me, but 
I craftily drew it out of her. No, she was 
very comfortable, and the house was grand 
beyond speech, but — but — where was 
he ? he had not been very hearty. ^ He * 
was the landlord ; she had expected him 
to receive us at the door and ask if we 
were in good health and how we had left 
the others, and then she would have asked 
him if his wife was well and how many 
children they had, after which we should 
all have sat down together to dinner. 

112 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

Two chambermaids came into her room 
and prepared it without a single word to 
her about her journey or on any other 
subject, and when they had gone, ' They 
are two haughty misses,* said my mother 
with spirit. But what she most resented 
was the waiter with his swagger black 
suit and short quick steps and the 
* towel ' over his arm. Without so much 
as a ' Welcome to Glasgow ! ' he showed 
us to our seats, not the smallest ac- 
knowledgment of our kindness in giving 
such munificent orders did we draw 
from him, he hovered around the table 
as if it would be unsafe to leave us 
with his knives and forks (he should 
have seen her knives and forks), when 
we spoke to each other he affected not 
to hear, we might laugh but this uppish 
fellow would not join in, we retired, 
crushed, and he had the final impudence 
8 113 



MARGARET OGILVY 

to open the door for us. But though this 

hurt my mother at the time, the humour 

of our experiences filled her on reflection, 

and in her own house she would describe 

them with unction, sometimes to those 

who had been in many hotels, often to 

others who had been in none, and 

whoever were her listeners she made 

them laugh, though not always at the 

same thing. 

So now when I enter the bedroom with 

the tray, on my arm is that badge of pride, 

the towel ; and I approach with prim steps 

to inform Madam that breakfast is ready, 

and she puts on the society manner and 

addresses me as ' Sir,' and asks with 

cruel sarcasm for what purpose (except 

to boast) I carry the towel, and I say ' Is 

there anything more I can do for Madam ? * 

and Madam replies that there is one more 

thing I can do, and that is, eat her. break- 
114 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

fast for her. But of this I take no notice, 
for my object is to fire her with the spirit 
of the game, so that she eats unwittingly. 

Now that I have washed up the break- 
fast things I should be at my writing, and 
I am anxious to be at it, as I have an idea 
in my head, which, if it is of any value, has 
almost certainly been put there by her. 
But dare I venture ? I know that the 
house has not been properly set going 
yet, there are beds to make, the exterior 
of the teapot is fair, but suppose some one 
were to look inside ? What a pity I 
knocked over the flour-barrel ! Can I 
hope that for once my mother will forget 
to inquire into these matters ? Is my 
sister willing to let disorder reign until 
to-morrow ? I determine to risk it. Per- 
haps I have been at work for half-an- 
hour v/hen I hear movements overhead. 
One or other of them is wondering why 
115 



MARGARET OGILVY 

the house is so quiet. I rattle the tongs, 

but even this does not satisfy them, so 

back into the desk go my papers, and 

now what you hear is not the scrape of a 

pen but the rinsing of pots and pans, 

or I am making beds, and making them 

thoroughly, because after I am gone my 

mother will come (I know her) and look 

suspiciously beneath the coverlet. 

The kitchen is now speckless, not an 

unwashed platter in sight, unless you 

look beneath the table. I feel that I have 

earned time for an hour's writing at last, 

and at it I go with vigour. One page, 

two pages, really I am making progress, 

when — was that a door opening? But I 

have my mother's light step on the brain, 

so I ' yoke ' again, and next moment she 

is beside me. She has not exactly left 

her room, she gives me to understand ; 

but suddenly a conviction had come to 
ir6 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

her that I was writing without a warm 
mat at my feet. She carries one in her 
hands. Now that she is here she remains 
for a time, and though she is in the arm- 
chair by the fire, where she sits bolt upright 
(she loved to have cushions on the unused 
chairs, but detested putting her back 
against them), and I am bent low over 
my desk, I know that contentment and 
pity are struggling for possession of her 
face : contentment wins when she surveys 
her room, pity when she looks at me. 
Every article of furniture, from the chairs 
that came into the world with me and have 
worn so much better, though I was new 
and they were second-hand, to the mantle- 
border of fashionable design which she 
sewed in her seventieth year, having 
picked up the stitch in half a lesson, has 
its story of fight and attainment for her, 

hence her satisfaction ; but she sighs at 
117 



MARGARET OGILVY 

sight of her son, dipping and tearing, and ' 
chewing the loathly pen. 

* Oh, that weary writing ! ' 

In vain do I tell her that writing is as 
pleasant to me as ever was the prospect 
of a tremendous day's ironing to her ; 
that (to some, though not to me) new 
chapters are as easy to turn out as new 
bannocks. No, she maintains, for one 
bannock is the marrows of another, while 
chapters — and then, perhaps, her eyes 
twinkle, and says she saucily, ' But, sal, 
you may be right, for sometimes your 
bannocks are as alike as mine ! * 

Or I may be roused from my writing 

by her cry that I am making strange faces 

again. It is my contemptible weakness 

that if I say a character smiled vacuously, 

I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or 

leers, I frown or leer ; if he is a coward or 

given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my 
ii8 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

legs until I have to stop writing to undo 
the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, 
and gnaw my moustache with him. If 
the character be a lady with an exquisite 
laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing 
exquisitely. One reads of the astounding 
versatility of an actor who is stout and 
lean on the same evening, but what is he 
to the novelist who is a dozen persons 
within the hour ? Morally, I fear, we 
must deteriorate — but this is a subject I 
may wisely edge away from. 

We always spoke to each other in broad 
Scotch (I think in it still), but now and 
again she would use a word that was new 
to me, or I might hear one of her contem- 
poraries use it. Now is my opportunity 
to angle for its meaning. If I ask, boldly, 
what was that word she used just now, 
something like ' bilbie ' or ' silvendy ' ? she 

blushes, and says she never said anything 
119 



MARGARET OGILVY 

so common, or hoots, it is some auld- 
farrant word about which she can tell 
me nothing. But if in the course of con- 
versation I remark casually, ' Did he find 
bilbie ? ' or ' Was that quite silvendy ? ' 
(though the sense of the question is vague 
to me) she falls into the trap, and the 
words explain themselves in her replies. 
Or maybe to-day she sees whither I am 
leading her, and such is her sensitiveness 
that she is quite hurt. The humour goes 
out of her face (to find bilbie in some 
more silvendy spot), and her reproachful 
eyes — but now I am on the arm of her 
chair, and we have made it up. Never- 
theless, I shall get no more old-world 
Scotch out of her this forenoon, she weeds 
her talk determinedly, and it is as great a 
falling away as when the mutch gives place 
to the cap. 

I am off for my afternoon walk, and. she 

I20 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

has promised to bar the door behind me 
and open it to none. When I return, — 
well, the door is still barred, but she is 
looking both furtive and elated. I should 
say that she is burning to tell me some- 
thing, but cannot tell it without exposing 
herself. Has she opened the door, and if 
so, why ? I don't ask, but I watch. It 
is she who is sly now : 

' Have you been in the east rooni since 
you came in ? * she asks with apparent 
indifference. 

' No ; why do you ask ? ' 

* Oh, I just thought you might have 
looked in.' 

' Is there anything new there ? ' 

' I dinna say there is, but — but just go 
and see.* 

' There can't be anything new if you 
kept the door barred,' I say cleverly. 

This crushes her for a moment ; but her 

121 



MARGARET OGILVY 

eagerness that I should see is greater 
than her fear. I set off for the east room, 
and she follows, affecting humility, but 
with triumph in her eye. How often those 
little scenes took place ! I was never told 
of the new purchase, I was lured into its 
presence, and then she waited timidly for 
my start of surprise. 

^ Do you see it ? ' she says anxiously, 
and I see it, and hear it, for this time it is 
a bran-new wicker chair, of the kind that 
whisper to themselves for the first six 
months. 

^ A going-about body was selling them 
in a cart,' my mother begins, and what fol- 
lowed presents itself to my eyes before she 
can utter another word. Ten minutes at 
the least did she stand at the door argy- 
bargying with that man. But it would be 
cruelty to scold a woman so uplifted. 

^ Fifteen shillings he wanted,' she cries, 

122 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

* but what do you think I beat him down 
to?' 

^ Seven and sixpence ? * 

She claps her hands with delight. 

* Four shillings, as I *m a living woman ! ' 
she crows : never was a woman fonder of a 
bargain. 

I gaze at the purchase with the amaze- 
ment expected of me, and the chair itself 
crinkles and shudders to hear what it went 
for (or is it merely chuckling at her ?). 
*And the man said it cost himself five shil- 
lings,* my mother continues exultantly. 
You would have thought her the hardest 
person had not a knock on the wall sum- 
moned us about this time to my sister's 
side. Though in bed she has been listen- 
ing, and this is what she has to say, in a 
voice that makes my mother very indig- 
nant, ' You drive a bargain ! I 'm think- 
ing ten shillings was nearer what you paid.' 
123 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' Four shillings to a penny ! ' says my 
mother. 

' I daresay/ says my sister ; ' but after 
you paid him the money I heard you in 
the little bedroom press. What were you 
doing there ? ' 

My mother winces. ^ I may have given 
him a present of an old top-coat/ she 
falters. ' He looked ill-happit. But that 
was after I made the bargain.* 

' Were there bairns in the cart ? ' 

' There might have been a bit lassie in 
the cart/ 

' I thought as much. What did you give 
her ? I heard you in the pantry.' 

' Four shillings was what I got that 
chair for/ replies my mother firmly. If I 
don't interfere there will be a coldness be- 
tween them for at least a minute. ^ There 
is blood on your finger/ I say to my 

mother. 

124 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

' So there is/ she says, concealing her 
hand. 

* Blood ! ' exclaims my sister anxiously, 
and then with a cry of triumph, ' I warrant 
it 's jelly. You gave that lassie one of the 
jelly cans ! ' 

The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and 

presently my sister is able to rise, and 

after a sharp fight I am expelled from the 

kitchen. The last thing I do as maid of all 

work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket 

which has just arrived with the mangling. 

Now there is delicious linen for my mother 

to finger ; there was always rapture on her 

face when the clothes-basket came in ; it 

never failed to make her once more the 

active genius of the house. I may leave her 

now with her sheets and collars and napkins 

and fronts. Indeed, she probably orders 

me to go. A son is all very well, but sup- 

pose he were to tread on that counterpane ! 
125 



MARGARET OGILVY 

My sister is but and I am ben — I mean 

she is in the east end and I am in the west 

— tuts, tuts, let us get at the English of 

this by striving : she is in the kitchen and 

I am at my desk in the parlour. I hope I 

may not be disturbed, for to-night I must 

make my hero say ' Darhng,* and it needs 

both privacy and concentration. In a 

word, let me admit (though I should like to 

beat about the bush) that I have sat down 

to a love-chapter. Too long has it been 

avoided, Albert has called Marion ' dear * 

only as yet (between you and me these 

are not their real names), but though the 

public will probably read the word without 

blinking, it went off in my hands with a 

bang. They tell me — the Sassenach tell 

me — that in time I shall be able without 

a blush to make Albert say ' darling,' and 

even gather her up in his arms, but I 

begin to doubt it ; the moment sees. me as 
126 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

shy as ever ; I still find it advisable to lock 
the door, and then — no witness save the 
dog — I ' do ' it dourly with my teeth 
clenched, while the dog retreats into the 
far corner and moans. The bolder English- 
man (I am told) will write a love-chapter 
and then go out, quite coolly, to dinner, but 
such goings on are contrary to the Scotch 
nature ; even the great novelists dared not. 
Conceive Mr. Stevenson left alone with a 
hero, a heroine, and a proposal impending 
(he does not know where to look). Sir 
Walter in the same circumstances gets 
out of the room by making his love- 
scenes take place between the end of one 
chapter and the beginning of the next, 
but he could afford to do anything, and 
the small fry must e'en to their task, 
moan the dog as he may. So I have 
yoked to mine when, enter my mother, 

looking wistful. 

127 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' I suppose you are terrible thrang/ she 
says. 

' Well, I am rather busy, but — what is 
it you want me to do ? * 

' It would be a shame to ask you.' 

* Still, ask me/ 

' I am so terrified they may be filed. ' 

' You want me to ? * 

^ If you would just come up, and help 
me to fold the sheets ! * 

The sheets are folded and I return to 
Albert. I lock the door and at last I am 
bringing my hero forward nicely (my knee 
in the small of his back), when this start- 
ling question is shot by my sister through 
the keyhole : 

' Where did you put the carrot-grater ? ' 

It will all have to be done over again if 

I let Albert go for a moment, so, gripping 

him hard, I shout indignantly that I have 

not seen the carrot-grater. 
128 



HER MAID OF ALL WORK 

*Then what did you grate the carrots 
on ? ' asks the voice, and the door-handle 
is shaken just as I shake Albert. 

' On a broken cup/ I reply with sur- 
prising readiness, and I get to work again 
but am less engrossed, for a conviction 
grows on me that I put the carrot-grater in 
the drawer of the sewing-machine. 

I am wondering whether I should con- 
fess or brazen it out, when I hear my 
sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a 
presentiment that she has gone to talk 
about me, and I basely open my door and 
listen. 

' Just look at that, mother ! * 

' Is it a dish-cloth?' 

* That 's what it is now.' 

' Losh behears ! it 's one of the new 
table-napkins.' 

' That 's what it was. He has been pol- 
ishing the kitchen grate with it ! ' 
9 129 



MARGARET OGILVY 

(I remember !) 

' Woe 's me ! That is what comes of his 
not letting me budge from this room. O, 
it is a watery Sabbath when men take to 
doing women's work ! * 

' It defies the face of clay, mother, to 
fathom what makes him so senseless/ 

'Oh, it *s that weary writing/ 

' And the worst of it is he will talk to- 
morrow as if he had done wonders/ 

' That 's the way with the whole clan- 
jamfray of them/ 

'Yes, but as usual you will humour 
him, mother/ 

' Oh, well, it pleases him, you see,* says 
my mother, ' and we can have our laugh 
when his door's shut/ 

' He is most terribly handless/ 

' He is all that, but, poor soul, he does 
his best/ 



130 



CHAPTER VII 

R. L. S. 

These familiar initials are, I suppose, 
the best beloved in recent literature, cer- 
tainly they are the sweetest to me, but 
there was a time when my mother could 
not abide them. She said ' That Steven- 
son man ' with a sneer, and it was never 
easy to her to sneer. At thought of him 
her face would become almost hard, which 
seems incredible, and she would knit her 
lips and fold her arms, and reply with a 
stiff ' oh ' if you mentioned his aggravating 
name. In the novels we have a way of 
writing of our heroine, ' she drew herself 
up haughtily,' and when mine draw them- 
selves up haughtily I see my mother think- 
131 



MARGARET OGILVY 

ing of Robert Louis Stevenson. He knew 
her opinion of him, and would write, ' My 
ears tingled yesterday ; I sair doubt she 
has been miscalling me again.* But the 
more she miscalled him the more he de- 
lighted in her, and she was informed of 
this, and at once said ' The scoundrel ! ' 
If you would know what was his unpar- 
donable crime, it was this, he wrote better 
books than mine. 

I remember the day she found it out, 
which was not, however, the day she 
admitted it. That day, when I should 
have been at my work, she came upon 
me in the kitchen, ' The Master of Bal- 
lantrae ' beside me, but I was not reading : 
my head lay heavy on the table and to 
her anxious eyes, I doubt not, I was the 
picture of woe. ^ Not writing ! ' I echoed, 
no, I was not writing, I saw no use in 

ever trying to write again. And down, I 
132 



R. L. S. 

suppose, went my head once more. She 
misunderstood, and thought the blow had 
fallen ; I had awakened to the discovery, 
always dreaded by her, that I had written 
myself dry ; I was no better than an 
empty ink-bottle. She wrung her hands, 
but indignation came to her with my ex- 
planation, which was that while R. L. S. 
was at it we others were only 'prentices 
cutting our fingers on his tools. ' I could 
never thole his books,' said my mother 
immediately, and indeed vindictively. 

'You have not read any of them,' I 
reminded her. 

' And never will,' said she with spirit. 

And I have no doubt that she called 
him a dark character that very day. For 
weeks too, if not for months, she adhered 
to her determination not to read him, 
though I, having come to my senses and 

seen that there is a place for the 'prentice, 
133 



MARGARET OGILVY 

was taking a pleasure, almost malicious, in 
putting ' The Master of Ballantrae ' in her 
way. I would place it on her table so that 
it said good-morning to her when she rose. 
She would frown, and carrying it down- 
stairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace 
it on its book-shelf. I would wrap it up 
in the cover she had made for the latest 
Carlyle : she would skin it contemptuously 
and again bring it down. I would hide 
her spectacles in it, and lay it on top of 
the clothes-basket and prop it up invit- 
ingly open against her tea-pot. And at 
last I got her, though I forget by which of 
many contrivances. What I recall vividly 
is a key-hole view, to which another mem- 
ber of the family invited me. Then I saw 
my mother wrapped up in ' The Master of 
Ballantrae ' and muttering the music to 
herself, nodding her head in approval, and 

taking a stealthy glance at the foot of each 
134 



R. L. S. 

page before she began at the top. Never- 
theless she had an ear for the door, for 
when I bounced in she had been too clever 
for me ; there was no book to be seen, only 
an apron on her lap and she was gazing out 
at the window. Some such conversation 
as this followed: 

' You have been sitting very quietly, 
mother.' 

^ I always sit quietly, I never do any- 
thing, I 'm just a finished stocking.' 

^ Have you been reading ? * 

* Do I ever read at this time of 
day?' 

^ What is that in your lap ? * 

* Just my apron.' 

' Is that a book beneath the apron ? ' 
' It might be a book.' 
' Let me see.' 

' Go away with you to your work.' 
But I hfted the apron. ' Why,"^ it 's 
135 



MARGARET OGILVY 

"The Master of Ballantrae ! " ' I ex- 
claimed, shocked. 

^ So it is ! ' said my mother, equally- 
surprised. But I looked sternly at her, 
and perhaps she blushed. 

^ Well what do you think : not nearly 
equal to mine ? * said I with humour. 

' Nothing like them,* she said deter- 
minedly. 

' Not a bit,* said I, though whether with a 
smile or a groan is immaterial ; they would 
have meant the same thing. Should I put 
the book back on its shelf? I asked, and 
she replied that I could put it wherever I 
liked for all she cared, so long as I took it 
out of her sight (the implication was that 
it had stolen on to her lap while she 
was looking out at the window). My be- 
haviour may seem small, but I gave her 
a last chance, for I said that some peo- 
ple found it a book there was no put- 
136 



R. L. S. 

ting down until they reached the last 
page. 

' I 'm no that kind/ replied my mother. 

Nevertheless our old game with the 
haver of a thing, as she called it, was 
continued, with this difference, that it was 
now she who carried the book covertly 
upstairs, and I who replaced it on the 
shelf, and several times we caught each 
other in the act, but not a word said either 
of us ; we were grown self-conscious. 
Much of the play no doubt I forget, but 
one incident I remember clearly. She had 
come down to sit beside me while I wrote, 
and sometimes, when I looked up, her eye 
was not on me, but on the shelf where ' The 
Master of Ballantrae ' stood inviting her. 
Mr. Stevenson's books are not for the shelf, 
they are for the hand ; even when you lay 
them down, let it be on the table for the 
next comer. Being the most sociable that 
137 



MARGARET OGILVY 

man has penned in our time, they feel 
very lonely up there in a stately row. I 
think their eye is on you the moment 
you enter the room, and so you are drawn 
to look at them, and you take a volume 
down with the impulse that induces one 
to unchain the dog. And the result is 
not dissimilar, for in another moment you 
two are at play. Is there any other 
modern writer who gets round you in this 
way ? Well, he had given my mother 
the look which in the ball-room means, 
'Ask me for this waltz,* and she et- 
tled to do it, but felt that her more duti- 
ful course was to sit out the dance with 
this other less entertaining partner. I 
wrote on doggedly, but could hear the 
whispering. 

' Am I to be a wall-flower ? ' asked 
James Durie reproachfully. (It must 

have been leap-year.) 
138 



R. L. S. 

^ Speak lower/ replied my mother, with 
an uneasy look at me. 

* Pooh ! ' said James contemptuously, 
* that kail-runtle ! ' 

* I winna have him miscalled/ said my 
mother, frowning. 

' I am done with him,* said James 
(wiping his cane with his cambric hand- 
kerchief), and his sword clattered deli- 
ciously (I cannot think this was accidental), 
which made my mother sigh. Like the 
man he was, he followed up his advantage 
with a comparison that made me dip 
viciously. 

' A prettier sound that,' said he, clank- 
ing his sword again, ' than the clack-clack 
of your young friend's shuttle.' 

* Whist ! ' cried my mother, who had 
seen me dip. 

*Then give me your arm,' said James, 
lowering his voice. 

139 



MARGARET OGILVY 

* I dare not/ answered my mother. 
' He 's so touchy about you/ 

' Come, come/ he pressed her, ' you are 
certain to do it sooner or later, so why not 
now ? * 

'Wait till he has gone for his walk,' 
said my mother ; ' and, forby that, I 'm 
ower old to dance with you.* 

' How old are you ? ' he inquired. 

* You 're gey an' pert ! * cried my 
mother. 

* Are you seventy ? ' 

' Off and on,' she admitted. 

' Pooh,' he said, ' a mere girl ! ' 

She replied instantly, ' I 'm no to be 
catched with chaff' ; but she smiled and 
rose as if he had stretched out his hand 
and got her by the finger-tip. 

After that they whispered so low (which 

they could do as they were now much 

nearer each other) that I could catch only 
140 



R. L. S. 

one remark. It came from James, and 
seems to show the tenor of their 
whisperings, for his words were, ^ Easily- 
enough, if you sHp me beneath your 
shawl/ 

That is what she did, and furthermore 
she left the room guiltily, muttering some- 
thing about redding up the drawers. I 
suppose I smiled wanly to myself, or con- 
science must have been nibbling at my 
mother, for in less than five minutes she 
was back, carrying her accomplice openly, 
and she thrust him with positive vicious- 
ness into the place where my Stevenson 
had lost a tooth (as the writer whom he 
most resembled would have said). And 
then like a good mother she took up one 
of her son's books and read it most de- 
terminedly. It had become a touching 
incident to me, and I remember how we 

there and then agreed upon a compromise : 
141 



MARGARET OGILVY 

she was to read the enticing thing just to 
convince herself of its inferiority. 

' The Master of Ballantrae ' is not the 
best. Conceive the glory, which was my 
mother's, of knowing from a trustworthy 
source that there are at least three better 
awaiting you on the same shelf. She did 
not know Alan Breck yet, and he was as 
anxious to step down as Mr. Bally him- 
self. John Silver was there, getting into 
his leg, so that she should not have to 
wait a moment, and roaring, ' I *11 lay to 
that ! ' when she told me consolingly that 
she could not thole pirate stories. Not to 
know these gentlemen, what is it like ? It 
is like never having been in love. But 
they are in the house ! That is like know- 
ing that you will fall in love to-morrow 
morning. With one word, by drawing one 
mournful face, I could have got my mother 

to abjure the jam-shelf — nay, I might have 
142 



R. L. S. 

managed it by merely saying that she 
had enjoyed ' The Master of Ballantrae/ 
For you must remember that she only read 
it to persuade herself (and me) of its un- 
worthiness, and that the reason she wanted 
to read the others was to get further proof. 
All this she made plain to me, eyeing me 
a little anxiously the while, and of course 
I accepted the explanation. Alan is the 
biggest child of them all, and I doubt not 
that she thought so, but curiously enough 
her views of him are among the things I 
have forgotten. But how enamoured she 
was of ' Treasure Island,' and how faithful 
she tried to be to me all the time she was 
reading it ! I had to put my hands over 
her eyes to let her know that I had 
entered the room, and even then she 
might try to read between my fingers, 
coming to herself presently, however, to 
say ' It's a haver of a book.' 
143 



MARGARET OGILVY 

* Those pirate stories are so uninterest- 
ing/ I would reply without fear, for she 
was too engrossed to see through me. 
' Do you think you will finish this one ? * 

' I may as well go on with it since I have 
begun it/ my mother says, so slily that 
my sister and I shake our heads at each 
other to imply, ^ Was there ever such a 
woman ! ' 

' There are none of those one-legged 
scoundrels in my books,' I say. 

^ Better without them,' she replies 
promptly. 

^ I wonder, mother, what it is about the 
man that so infatuates the public ? ' 

' He takes no hold of me,' she insists. 
* I would a hantle rather read your books.' 

I offer obligingly to bring one of them 
to her, and now she looks at me suspi- 
ciously. ^You surely believe I like yours 

best/ she says with instant anxiety, and I 
144 



R. L. S. 

soothe her by assurances, and retire advis- 
ing her to read on, just to see if she can 
find out how he misleads the public. ' Oh, 
I may take a look at it again by and by,* 
she says indifferently, but nevertheless 
the probability is that as the door shuts 
the book opens, as if by some mechanical 
contrivance. I remember how she read 
' Treasure Island,' holding it close to the 
ribs of the fire (because she could not 
spare a moment to rise and light the gas), 
and how, when bed-time came, and we 
coaxed, remonstrated, scolded, she said 
quite fiercely, clinging to the book, ^ I 
dinna lay my head on a pillow this night 
till I see how that laddie got out of the 
barrel.' 

After this, I think, he was as bewitching 
as the laddie in the barrel to her — Was 
he not always a laddie in the barrel him- 
self, climbing in for apples while we all 
10 145 



MARGARET OGILVY 

stood around, like gamins, waiting for a 
bite ? He was the spirit of boyhood tug- 
ging at the skirts of this old world of ours 
and compelling it to come back and play. 
And I suppose my mother felt this, as so 
many have felt it: like others she was a 
little scared at first to find herself skip- 
ping again, with this masterful child at 
the rope, but soon she gave him her hand 
and set off with him for the meadow, not 
an apology between the two of them for 
the author left behind. But never to the 
end did she admit (in words) that he had 
a way with him which was beyond her 
son. ' Silk and sacking, that is what we 
are,' she was informed, to which she 
would reply obstinately, 'Well, then, I 
prefer sacking.* 

' But if he had been your son ? ' 

' But he is not.' 

' You wish he were ? ' 
146 



! 



R. L. S. 

* I dinna deny but what I could have 
found room for him/ 

And still at times she would smear him 
with the name of black (to his delight 
when he learned the reason). That 
was when some podgy red-sealed blue- 
crossed letter arrived from Vailima, in- 
viting me to journey thither. (His direc- 
tions were, 'You take the boat at San 
Francisco, and then my place is the 
second to the left.') Even London 
seemed to her to carry me so far away 
that I often took a week to the journey 
(the first six days in getting her used to 
the idea), and these letters terrified her. 
It was not the finger of Jim Hawkins 
she now saw beckoning me across the 
seas, it was John Silver, waving a crutch. 
Seldom, I believe, did I read straight 
through one of these Vailima letters ; 
when in the middle I suddenly remem- 
147 



MARGARET OGILVY 

bered who was upstairs and what she 
was probably doing, and I ran to her, 
three steps at a jump, to find her, Hps 
pursed, hands folded, a picture of gloom. 

^ I have a letter from ' 

^ So I have heard/ 

^ Would you like to hear It ? ' 

'No: 

' Can you not abide him ? ' 

^ I canna thole him/ 

' Is he a black ? ' 

' He is all that.' 

Well, Vailima was the one spot on 

earth I had any great craving to visit, but 

I think she always knew I would never 

leave her. Sometime, she said, she should 

like me to go, but not until she was laid 

away. ^ And how small I have grown this 

last winter. Look at my wrists. It canna 

be long now.' No, I never thought of 

going, was never absent for a day from 
148 



R. L. S. 

her without reluctance, and never walked 
so quickly as when I was going back. 
In the meantime that happened which 
put an end for ever to my scheme of 
travel. I shall never go up the Road of 
Loving Hearts now, on ^ a wonderful clear 
night of stars,' to meet the man coming 
toward me on a horse. It is still a wonder- 
ful clear night of stars, but the road is 
empty. So I never saw the dear king of 
us all. But before he had written books 
he was in my part of the country with a 
fishing wand in his hand, and I like to 
think that I was the boy who met him 
that day by Queen Margaret's burn, 
where the rowans are, and busked a 
fly for him, and stood watching, while his 
lithe figure rose and fell as he cast and 
hinted back from the crystal waters of 
Noran-side. 



149 



CHAPTER VIII 

A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

I WAS sitting at my desk in London when a 
telegram came announcing that my mother 
was again dangerously ill, and I seized my 
hat and hurried to the station. It is 
not a memory of one night only. A score 
of times, I am sure, I was called north 
thus suddenly, and reached our little town 
trembling, head out at railway-carriage 
window for a glance at a known face 
which would answer the question on mine. 
These illnesses came as regularly as the 
backend of the year, but were less regular 
in going, and through them all, by night 
and by day, I see my sister moving so un- 
wearyingly, so lovingly, though with failing 
ISO 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

strength, that I bow my head in reverence 
for her. She was wearing herself done. 
The doctor advised us to engage a nurse, 
but the mere word frightened my mother, 
and we got between her and the door as 
if the woman was already on the stair. 
To have a strange woman in my mother's 
room — you who are used to them cannot 
conceive what it meant to us. 

Then we must have a servant. This 
seemed only less horrible. My father 
turned up his sleeves and clutched the 
besom. I tossed aside my papers, and was 
ready to run the errands. He answered 
the door, I kept the fires going, he gave me 
a lesson in cooking, I showed him how to 
make beds, one of us wore an apron. It 
was not for long. I was led to my desk, 
the newspaper was put into my father's 
hand. ^ But a servant ! ' we cried, and 
would have fallen to again. ^ No servant 
151 



MARGARET OGILVY 

comes into this house/ said my sister quite 
fiercely, and, oh, but my mother was re- 
lieved to hear her. There were many such 
scenes, a year of them, I daresay, before 
we yielded. 

I cannot say which of us felt it most. 
In London I was used to servants, and in 
moments of irritation would ring for them 
furiously, though doubtless my manner 
changed as they opened the door. I have 
even held my own with gentlemen in 
plush, giving one my hat, another my 
stick, and a third my coat, and all done 
with little more trouble than I should 
have expended in putting the three articles 
on the chair myself. But this bold deed, 
and other big things of the kind, I did 
that I might tell my mother of them 
afterwards, while I sat on the end of her 
bed, and her face beamed with astonish- 
ment and mirth. 

152 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

From my earliest days I had seen ser- 
vants. The manse had a servant, the 
bank had another ; one of their uses was 
to pounce upon, and carry away in stately 
manner, certain naughty boys who played 
with me. The banker did not seem really 
great to me, but his servant — oh, yes. 
Her boots cheeped all the way down the 
church aisle ; it was common report that 
she had flesh every day for her dinner ; 
instead of meeting her lover at the pump 
she walked him into the country, and he 
returned with wild roses in his buttonhole, 
his hand up to hide them, and on his face 
the troubled look of those who know that 
if they take this lady they must give up 
drinking from the saucer for evermore. 
For the lovers were really common men 
until she gave them that glance over the 
shoulder which, I have noticed, is the fatal 
gift of servants. 

153 



MARGARET OGILVY 

According to legend we once had a 
servant — in my childhood I could show 
the mark of it on my forehead, and even 
point her out to other boys, though she 
was now merely a wife with a house of her 
own. But even while I boasted I doubted. 
Reduced to life-size she may have been 
but a woman who came in to help. I shall 
say no more about her lest some one 
comes forward to prove that she went 
home at night. 

Never shall I forget my first servant. I 

was eight or nine, in velveteen, diamond 

socks (' Cross your legs when they look 

at you,* my mother had said, 'and put 

your thumb in your pocket and leave the 

top of your handkerchief showing'), and I 

had travelled by rail to visit a relative. 

He had a servant, and as I was to be his 

guest she must be my servant also for the 

time being — you may be sure I had got 
154 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

my mother to put this plainly before me 
ere I set off. My relative met me at the 
station, but I wasted no time in hoping I 
found him well. I did not even cross my 
legs for him, so eager was I to hear whether 
she was still there. A sister greeted me 
at the door, but I chafed at having to be 
kissed ; at once I made for the kitchen, 
where, I knew, they reside, and there she 
was, and I crossed my legs and put one 
thumb in my pocket, and the handker- 
chief was showing. Afterwards I stopped 
strangers on the highway with an offer 
to show her to them through the kitchen 
window, and I doubt not the first letter 
I ever wrote told my mother what they 
are like when they are so near that you 
can put your fingers into them. 

But now when we could have servants 
for ourselves I shrank from the thought. 

It would not be the same house ; we 
^S5 



MARGARET OGILVY 

should have to dissemble ; I saw myself 
speaking English the long day through. 
You only know the shell of a Scot until 
you have entered his home circle ; in his 
office, in clubs, at social gatherings where 
you and he seem to be getting on so 
well he is really a house with all the 
shutters closed and the door locked. He 
is not opaque of set purpose, often it is 
against his will — it is certainly against 
mine, I try to keep my shutters open and 
my foot in the door but they will bang 
to. In many ways my mother was as 
reticent as myself, though her manners 
were as gracious as mine were rough (in 
vain, alas, all the honest oiling of them), 
and my sister was the most reserved of us 
all ; you might at times see a light through 
one of my chinks : she was double-shut- 
tered. Now, it seems to be a law of 

nature that we must show our true selves 
156 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

at some time, and as the Scot must do 
it at home, and squeeze a day into an 
hour, what follows is that there he is self- 
revealing in the superlative degree, the 
feelings so long dammed up overflow, and 
thus a Scotch family are probably better 
acquainted with each other, and more 
ignorant of the life outside their circle, 
than any other family in the world. And 
as knowledge is sympathy, the affection 
existing between them is almost painful 
in its intensity; they have not more to 
give than their neighbours, but it is be- 
stowed upon a few instead of being dis- 
tributed among many ; they are reputed 
niggardly, but for family affection at least 
they pay in gold. In this, I believe, 
we shall find the true explanation why 
Scotch literature, since long before the 
days of Burns, has been so often in- 
spired by the domestic hearth and 
157 



MARGARET OGILVY 

has treated it with a passionate under- 
standing. 

Must a woman come into our house and 
discover that I was not such a dreary- 
dog as I had the reputation of being ? 
Was I to be seen at last with the veil of 
dourness lifted ? My company voice is so 
low and unimpressive that my first remark 
is merely an intimation that I am about to 
speak (hke the whirr of the clock before it 
strikes) : must it be revealed that I had 
another voice, that there was one door I 
never opened without leaving my reserve 
on the mat ? Ah, that room, must its 
secrets be disclosed ? So joyous they were 
when my mother was well, no wonder we 
were merry. Again and again she had 
been given back to us ; it was for the glori- 
ous to-day we thanked God ; in our hearts 
we knew and in our prayers confessed that 

the fill of delight had been given us, what- 

158 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

ever might befall. We had not to wait till 
all was over to know its value ; my mother 
used to say, 'We never understand how 
little we need in this world until we know 
the loss of it/ and there can be few truer 
sayings, but during her last years we 
exulted daily in the possession of her as 
much as we can exult in her memory. No 
wonder, I say, that we were merry, but we 
Hked to show it to God alone, and to Him 
only our agony during those many night- 
alarms, when lights flickered in the house 
and white faces were round my mother's 
bedside. Not for other eyes those long 
vigils when, night about, we sat watching, 
nor the awful nights when we stood to- 
gether, teeth clenched — waiting — it must 
be now. And it was not then ; her hand 
became cooler, her breathing more easy ; 
she smiled to us. Once more I could 

work by snatches, and was glad, but what 
159 



MARGARET OGILVY 

was the result to me compared to the joy 

of hearing that voice from the other room ? 

There lay all the work I was ever proud of, 

the rest is but honest craftsmanship done 

to give her coal and food and softer pillows. 

My thousand letters that she so carefully 

preserved, always sleeping with the last 

beneath the sheet, where one was found 

when she died — they are the only writing 

of mine of which I shall ever boast. I 

would not there had been one less though 

I could have written an immortal book 

for it. 

How my sister toiled — to prevent a 

stranger's getting any footing in the house ! 

And how, with the same object, my mother 

strove to ' do for herself once more. She 

pretended that she was always well now, 

and concealed her ailments so craftily that 

we had to probe for them : 

' I think you are not feeling well to-day ? ' 
i6o 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

* I am perfectly well.' 
' Where is the pain ? ' 

^ I have no pain to speak of.' 

Ms it at your heart ? ' 

'No.' 

' Is your breathing hurting you ? ' 

' Not it.' 

' Do you feel those stounds in your head 
again ? ' 

' No, no, I tell you there is nothing the 
matter with me.' 

' Have you a pain in your side ? ' 

* Really, it 's most provoking I canna 
put my hand to my side without your 
thinking I have a pain there.' 

' You have a pain in your side ! ' 
' I might have a pain in my side.' 

* And you are trying to hide it ! Is it 
very painful ? ' 

Mt 's — it 's no so bad but what I can 

bear it.' 

II i6i 



MARGARET OGILVY 

Which of these two gave in first I 
cannot tell, though to me fell the duty of 
persuading them, for whichever she was 
she rebelled as soon as the other showed 
signs of yielding, so that sometimes I 
had two converts in the week but never 
both on the same day. I would take them 
separately, and press the one to yield for the 
sake of the other, but they saw so easily 
through my artifice. My mother might go 
bravely to my sister and say, ' I have been 
thinking it over, and I believe I would like 
a servant fine — once we got used to her.* 

' Did he tell you to say that ? * asks 
my sister sharply. 

' I say it of my own free will.* 

' He put you up to it, I am sure, and he 
told you not to let on that you did it to 
lighten my work.* 

' Maybe he did, but I think we should 

get one.* 

162 



A PANIC IN THE HOUSE 

' Not for my sake/ says my sister obsti- 
nately, and then my mother comes ben to 
me to say delightedly, 'She winna listen 
to reason ! ' 

But at last a servant was engaged ; we 
might be said to be at the window, gloomily 
waiting for her now, and it was with such 
words as these that we sought to comfort 
each other and ourselves : 

' She will go early to her bed/ 

' She needna often be seen upstairs/ 

^We'll set her to the walking every 

day/ 

' There will be a many errands for her 
to run. We 41 tell her to take her time 
over them/ 

' Three times she shall go to the kirk 
every Sabbath, and we'll egg her on to 
attending the lectures in the hall/ 

' She is sure to have friends in the town. 

We '11 let her visit them often.' 
163 



MARGARET OGILVY 

* If she dares to come into your room, 
mother ! * 

' Mind this, every one of you, servant or 
no servant, I fold all the linen mysel/ 

' She shall not get cleaning out the east 
room/ 

'Nor putting my chest of drawers in 
order/ 

' Nor tidying up my manuscripts/ 

' I hope she *s a reader, though. You 
could set her down with a book, and then 
close the door canny on her/ 

And so on. Was ever servant awaited 
so apprehensively ? And then she came 
— at an anxious time, too, when her 
worth could be put to the proof at once — 
and from first to last she was a treasure. 
I know not what we should have done 
without her. 



164 



CHAPTER IX 

MY HEROINE 

When it was known that I had begun 
another story my mother might ask what 
it was to be about this time. 

' Fine we can guess who it is about/ my 
sister would say pointedly. 

^ Maybe you can guess, but it is be- 
yond me/ says my mother, with the meek- 
ness of one who knows that she is a dull 
person. 

My sister scorned her at such times. 
' What woman is in all his books ? ' she 
would demand. 

* I 'm sure I canna say/ replies my 
mother determinedly. ' I thought the 

women were different every time.' 
165 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' Mother, I wonder you can be so auda- 
cious ! Fine you know what woman I 
mean/ 

^ How can I know ? What woman is it ? 
You should bear in mind that I hinna your 
cleverness* (they were constantly giving 
each other little knocks). 

^ I won't give you the satisfaction of 
saying her name. But this I will say, it 
is high time he was keeping her out of his 
books/ 

And then as usual my mother would 
give herself away unconsciously. ' That is 
what I tell him,' she says chuckling, ' and 
he tries to keep me out, but he canna; 
it 's more than he can do ! ' 

On an evening after my mother had gone 

to bed, the first chapter would be brought 

upstairs, and I read, sitting at the foot of 

the bed, while my sister watched to make 

my mother behave herself, and my father 
i66 



MY HEROINE 

cried H'sh ! when there were interruptions. 
All would go well at the start, the reflec- 
tions were accepted with a little nod of the 
head, the descriptions of scenery as ruts 
on the road that must be got over at a 
walking pace (my mother did not care for 
scenery, and that is why there is so little 
of it in my books). But now I am reading 
too quickly, a little apprehensively, because 
I know that the next paragraph begins 
with — let us say with, ' Along this path 
came a woman' : I had intended to rush on 
here in a loud bullying voice, but ' Along 
this path came a woman ' I read, and stop. 
Did I hear a faint sound from the other 
end of the bed ? Perhaps I did not ; I may 
only have been listening for it, but I falter 
and look up. My sister and I look sternly 
at my mother. She bites her under-lip and 
clutches the bed with both hands, really 

she is doing her best for me, but first 
167 



MARGARET OGILVY 

comes a smothered gurgling sound, then 
her hold on herself relaxes and she shakes 
with mirth. 

' That 's a way to behave ! ' cries my sister. 

' I cannot help it/ my mother gasps. 

' And there 's nothing to laugh at' 

' It 's that woman/ my mother explains 
unnecessarily. 

* Maybe she *s not the woman you think 
her/ I say, crushed. 

' Maybe not,' says my mother doubt- 
fully. ' What was her name ? ' 

' Her name,' I answer with triumph, 
' was not Margaret ' ; but this makes her 
ripple again. ^ I have so many names 
nowadays,' she mutters. 

' H'sh ! ' says my father, and the reading 
is resumed. 

Perhaps the woman who came along 

the path was of tall and majestic figure, 

which should have shown my mother that 
i68 



MY HEROINE 

I had contrived to start my train without 
her this time. But it did not. 

' What are you laughing at now ? ' says 
my sister severely. ' Do you not hear that 
she was a tall, majestic woman ? ' 

' It 's the first time I ever heard it said 
of her/ replies my mother. 

' But she is.' 

' Ke fy, havers ! * 

' The book says it.' 

' There will be a many queer things in 
the book. What was she wearing ? ' 

I have not described her clothes. ' That 's 
a mistake/ says my mother. ' When I 
come upon a woman in a book, the first 
thing I want to know about her is whether 
she was good-looking, and the second, 
how she was put on.* 

The woman on the path was eighteen 

years of age, and of remarkable beauty. 

' That settles you,' says my sister. 
169 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' I was no beauty at eighteen/ my mother 
admits, but here my father interferes un- 
expectedly. ' There wasna your Hke in this 
countryside at eighteen/ says he stoutly. 

^ Pooh ! ' says she, well-pleased. 

' Were you plain, then ? ' we ask. 

* Sal,* she replies briskly, ' I was far 
from plain.* 

'H'sh!* 

Perhaps in the next chapter this lady 
(or another) appears in a carriage. 

' I assure you we *re mounting in the 

world,' I hear my mother murmur, but I 

hurry on without looking up. The lady 

lives in a house where there are footmen — 

but the footmen have come on the scene 

too hurriedly. ' This is more than I can 

stand,* gasps my mother, and just as she 

is getting the better of a fit of laughter, 

' Footman, give me a drink of water,* she 

cries, and this sets her oflF again. Often the 
170 



MY HEROINE 

readings had to end abruptly because her 
mirth brought on violent fits of coughing. 

Sometimes I read to my sister alone, 
and she assured me that she could not 
see my mother among the women this 
time. This she said to humour me. Pre- 
sently she would slip upstairs to announce 
triumphantly, * You are in again ! ' 

Or in the small hours I might make a 
confidant of my father, and when I had 
finished reading he would say thought- 
fully, ^ That lassie is very natural. Some 
of the ways you say she had — your mother 
had them just the same. Did you ever 
notice what an extraordinary woman your 
mother is? ' 

Then would I seek my mother for com- 
fort. She was the more ready to give it 
because of her profound conviction that if 
I was found out — that is, if readers dis- 
covered how frequently and in how many 
171 



MARGARET OGILVY 

guises she appeared in my books — the 
affair would become a pubHc scandal. 

' You see Jess is not really you/ I 
begin inquiringly/ 

' Oh, no, she is another kind of woman 
altogether,' my mother says, and then 
spoils the compHment by adding naively, 
' She had but two rooms and I have six/ 

I sigh. ' Without counting the pantry, 
and it 's a great big pantry,* she mutters. 

This was not the sort of difference I 
could greatly plume myself upon, and 
honesty would force me to say, ' As far 
as that goes, there was a time when you 
had but two rooms yourself ' 

^ That 's long since,' she breaks in. ^ I 

began with an up-the-stair, but I always 

had it in my mind — I never mentioned 

it, but there it was — to have the down- 

the-stair as well. Ay, and I 've had it 

this many a year.' 

172 



MY HEROINE 

^ Still, there is no denying that Jess 
had the same ambition/ 

' She had, but to her two-roomed house 
she had to stick all her born days. Was 
that like me ? ' 

' No, but she wanted * 

' She wanted, and I wanted, but I got 
and she didna. That's the difference 
betwixt her and me.* 

^ If that is all the difference, it is little 
credit I can claim for having created her.* 

My mother sees that I need soothing. 
* That is far from being all the difference,' 
she would say eagerly. ' There *s my silk, 
for instance. Though I say it mysel, 
there *s not a better silk in the valley of 
Strathmore. Had Jess a silk of any kind 
— not to speak of a silk like that ? * 

^ Well, she had no silk, but you remem- 
ber how she got that cloak with beads.* 

*An eleven and a bit! Hoots, what 
^73 



MARGARET OGILVY 

was that to boast of! I tell you, every 
single yard of my silk cost ' 

' Mother, that is the very way Jess 
spoke about her cloak ! ' 

She lets this pass, perhaps without 
hearing it, for solicitude about her silk 
has hurried her to the wardrobe where 
it hangs. 

' Ah, mother, I am afraid that was very 
like Jess ! ' 

' How could it be like her when she 
didna even have a wardrobe ? I tell you 
what, if there had been a real Jess and she 
had boasted to me about her cloak with 
beads, I would have said to her in a care- 
less sort of voice, " Step across with me, 
Jess, and I '11 let you see something that 
is hanging in my wardrobe." That would 
have lowered her pride ! ' 

^ I don't believe that is what you would 
have done, mother.' 



MY HEROINE 

Then a sweeter expression would come 
into her face. ^ No/ she would say reflec- 
tively, ^ it 's not/ 

' What would you have done ? I think 
I know/ 

' You canna know. But I 'm thinking 
I would have called to mind that she was 
a poor woman, and ailing, and terrible 
windy about her cloak, and I would just 
have said it was a beauty and that I 
wished I had one like it.* 

'Yes, I am certain that is what you 
would have done. But oh, mother, that 
is just how Jess would have acted if some 
poorer woman than she had shown her a 
new shawl.' 

'Maybe, but though I hadna boasted 
about my silk I would have wanted to 
do it.' 

'Just as Jess would have been fidget- 
ing to show off her eleven and a bit ! * 
^75 • 



MARGARET OGILVY 

It seems advisable to jump to another 
book ; not to my first, because — well, as 
it was my first there would naturally be 
something of my mother in it, and not to 
the second, as it was my first novel and 
not much esteemed even in our family. 
(But the little touches of my mother in it 
are not so bad.) Let us try the story 
about the minister. 

My mother's first remark is decidedly 
damping. ' Many a time in my young 
days,' she says, ^ I played about the Auld 
Licht manse, but I little thought I should 
live to be the mistress of it ! * 

' But Margaret is not you.' 

' N — no, oh no. She had a very differ- 
ent hfe from mine. I never let on to a 
soul that she is me ! * 

^ She was not meant to be you when I 

began. Mother, what a way you have of 

coming creeping in ! ' 
176 



MY HEROINE 

^You should keep better watch on 
yourself/ 

' Perhaps if I had called Margaret by- 
some other name * 

'I should have seen through her just 
the same. As soon as I heard she was the 
mother I began to laugh. In some ways, 
though, she 's no so very Hke me. She 
was long in finding out about Babbie. 
I 'se uphaud I should have been quicker.' 

^ Babbie, you see, kept close to the 
garden-wall.* 

Mt 's not the wall up at the manse that 
would have hidden her from me.* 

' She came out in the dark.' 

' I *m thinking she would have found me 
looking for her with a candle.' 

^ And Gavin was secretive.' 

* That would have put me on my 

mettle.' 

' She never suspected anything.' 
12 177 



MARGARET OGILVY 

' I wonder at her/ 

But my new heroine is to be a child. 
What has madam to say to that ? 

A child ! Yes, she has something to 
say even to that. ' This beats all ! * are 
the words. 

' Come, come, mother, I see what you 
are thinking, but I assure you that this 
time ' 

' Of course not,' she said soothingly, 
^ oh, no, she canna be me ' ; but anon her 
real thoughts are revealed by the artless 
remark, ' I doubt, though, this is a tough 
job you have on hand — it is so long since 
I was a bairn.' 

We came very close to each other in 
those talks. 'It is a queer thing,' she 
would say softly, ' that near everything 
you write is about this bit place. You 
little expected that when you began. I 

mind well the time when it never entered 

178 



MY HEROINE 

your head, any more than mine, that you 
could write a page about our squares and 
wynds. I wonder how it has come about ? * 

There was a time when I could not have 
answered that question, but that time had 
long passed. * I suppose, mother, it was 
because you were most at home in your 
own town, and there was never much 
pleasure to me in writing of people who 
could not have known you, nor of squares 
and wynds you never passed through, nor 
of a countryside where you never carried 
your father*s dinner in a flaggon. There 
is scarce a house in all my books where 
I have not seemed to see you a thousand 
times, bending over the fireplace or wind- 
ing up the clock/ 

' And yet you used to be in such a quan- 
dary because you knew nobody you could 
make your women-folk out of! Do you 

mind that, and how we both laughed at 
179 



MARGARET OGILVY 

the notion of your having to make them 
out of me ? * 

' I remember/ 

^ And now you Ve gone back to my 
father^s time. It 's more than sixty years 
since I carried his dinner in a flaggon 
through the long parks of Kinnordy/ 

' I often go into the long parks, mother, 
and sit on the stile at the edge of the 
wood till I fancy I see a little girl coming 
toward me with a flaggon in her hand/ 

'Jumping the burn (I was once so 
proud of my jumps !) and swinging the 
flaggon round so quick that what was 
inside hadna time to fall out. I used to 
wear a magenta frock and a white pina- 
fore. Did I ever tell you that ? ' 

' Mother, the little girl in my story 

wears a magenta frock and a white 

pinafore.' 

* You minded that ! But I 'm thinking 
i8o 



MY HEROINE 

it wasna a lassie in a pinafore you saw 
in the long parks of Kinnordy, it was just 
a gey done auld woman/ 

' It was a lassie in a pinafore, mother, 
when she was far away, but when she 
came near it was a gey done auld woman/ 

' And a fell ugly one ! ' 

'The most beautiful one I shall ever 
see/ 

' I wonder to hear you say it. Look at 
my wrinkled auld face/ 

' It is the sweetest face in all the world/ 

' See how the rings drop off my poor 
wasted finger/ 

' There will always be some one nigh, 
mother, to put them on again/ 

* Ay, will there ! Well I know it. Do 
you mind how when you were but a bairn 
you used to say, " Wait till I 'm a man, 
and you '11 never have a reason for greet- 



ing again ? 



I8i 



MARGARET OGILVY 

I remembered. 

'You used to come running into the 
house to say, " There *s a proud dame 
going down the Marywellbrae in a cloak 
that is black on one side and white on the 
other ; wait till I 'm a man, and you '11 have 
one the very same." And when I lay on gey 
hard beds you said, " When I 'm a man 
you '11 lie on feathers." You saw nothing 
bonny, you never heard of my setting my 
heart on anything, but what you flung up 
your head and cried, " Wait till I 'm a man." 
You fair shamed me before the neigh- 
bours, and yet I was windy, too. And now 
it has all come true like a dream. I can 
call to mind not one little thing I ettled 
for in my lusty days that hasna been put 
into my hands in my auld age ; I sit here 
useless, surrounded by the gratification 
of all my wishes and all my ambitions, 

and at times I 'm near terrified, for it 's as 
182 



MY HEROINE 

if God had mista'en me for some other 
woman/ 

' Your hopes and ambitions were so 
simple/ I would say, but she did not Hke 
that. ' They werna that simple/ she 
would answer, flushing. 

I am reluctant to leave those happy 
days, but the end must be faced, and as I 
write I seem to see my mother growing 
smaller and her face more wistful, and 
still she lingers with us, as if God had 
said, ' Child of mine, your time has come, 
be not afraid,' and she was not afraid, but 
still she lingered, and He waited, smiling. 
I never read any of that last book to her ; 
when it was finished she was too heavy 
with years to follow a story. To me this 
was as if my book must go out cold into 
the world (like all that may come after it 
from me), and my sister, who took more 

thought for others and less for herself than 
183 



MARGARET OGILVY 

any other human being I have known, 
saw this, and by some means unfathomable 
to a man coaxed my mother into being 
once again the woman she had been. On 
a day but three weeks before she died 
my father and I were called softly upstairs. 
My mother was sitting bolt upright, as 
she loved to sit, in her old chair by the 
window, with a manuscript in her hands. 
But she was looking about her without 
much understanding. ' Just to please him,' 
my sister whispered, and then in a low, 
trembling voice my mother began to read. 
I looked at my sister. Tears of woe were 
stealing down her face. Soon the reading 
became very slow and stopped. After a 
pause, ' There was something you were to 
say to him,' my sister reminded her. 
' Luck,' muttered a voice as from the dead, 
' luck.' And then the old smile came run- 
ning to her face like a lamp-lighter^ and 
184 



MY HEROINE 

she said to me, ' I am ower far gone to read, 
but I 'm thinking I am in it again ! ' My 
father put her Testament in her hands, and 
it fell open — as it always does — at the 
Fourteenth of John. She made an effort to 
read but could not. Suddenly she stooped 
and kissed the broad page. ' Will that do 
instead ? ' she asked. 



185 



CHAPTER X 

ART THOU AFRAID HIS POWER SHALL FAIL ? 

For years I had been trying to prepare 
myself for my mother's death, trying to 
foresee how she would die, seeing myself 
when she was dead. Even then I knew it 
was a vain thing I did, but I am sure there 
was no morbidness in it. I hoped I should 
be with her at the end, not as the one she 
looked at last but as him from whom she 
would turn only to look upon her best- 
beloved, not my arm but my sister's 
should be round her when she died, not 
my hand but my sister's should close her 
eyes. I knew that I might reach her too 
late ; I saw myself open a door where 

there was none to greet me, and go up 
i86 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

the old stair into the old room. But what 
I did not foresee was that which happened. 
I little thought it could come about that I 
should climb the old stair, and pass the 
door beyond which my mother lay dead, 
and enter another room first, and go on 
my knees there. 

My mother's favourite paraphrase is one 
known in our house as David's because 
it was the last he learned to repeat. It 
was also the last thing she read — 

Art thou afraid his power shall fail 

When comes thy evil day ? 
And can an all-creating arm 

Grow weary or decay ? 

I heard her voice gain strength as she 

read it, I saw her timid face take courage, 

but when came my evil day, then at the 

dawning, alas for me, I was afraid. 

In those last weeks, though we did not 
187 



MARGARET OGILVY 

know it, my sister was dying on her feet. 

For many years she had been giving her 

life, a little bit at a time, for another year, 

another month, latterly for another day, of 

her mother, and now she was worn out. 

' I '11 never leave you, mother.* — ' Fine I 

know you '11 never leave me.' I thought 

that cry so pathetic at the time, but I was 

not to know its full significance until it 

was only the echo of a cry. Looking at 

these two then it was to me as if my 

mother had set out for the new country, 

and my sister held her back. But I see 

with a clearer vision now. It is no longer 

the mother but the daughter who is in 

front, and she cries, ' Mother, you are 

lingering so long at the end, I have ill 

waiting for you.' 

But she knew no more than we how it 

was to be ; if she seemed weary when we 

met her on the stair, she was still the 
i88 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

brightest, the most active figure in my 
mother's room ; she never complained, 
save when she had to depart on that walk 
which separated them for half an hour. 
How reluctantly she put on her bonnet, 
how we had to press her to it, and how 
often, having gone as far as the door, she 
came back to stand by my mother's side. 
Sometimes as we watched from the win- 
dow, I could not but laugh, and yet with 
a pain at my heart, to see her hasting dog- 
gedly onward, not an eye for right or left, 
nothing in her head but the return. 
There was always my father in the house, 
than whom never was a more devoted 
husband, and often there were others, one 
daughter in particular, but they scarce 
dared tend my mother — this one snatched 
the cup jealously from their hands. My 
mother liked it best from her. We all 

knew this. ' I like them fine, but I canna 
189 



MARGARET OGILVY 

do without you.' My sister, so unselfish 
in all other things, had an unwearying pas- 
sion for parading it before us. It was the 
rich reward of her life. 

The others spoke among themselves of 
what must come soon, and they had tears 
to help them, but this daughter would not 
speak of it, and her tears were ever slow 
to come. I knew that night and day she 
was trying to get ready for a world with- 
out her mother in it, but she must remain 
dumb, none of us was so Scotch as she, 
she must bear her agony alone, a tragic 
solitary Scotchwoman. Even my mother, 
who spoke so calmly to us of the coming 
time, could not mention it to her. These 
two, the one in bed, and the other bending 
over her, could only look long at each other, 
until slowly the tears came to my sister's 
eyes, and then my mother would turn 

away her wet face. And still neither said a 
190 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

word, each knew so well what was in the 
other's thoughts, so eloquently they spoke 
in silence, ' Mother, I am loath to let you 
go,* and ' Oh, my daughter, now that my 
time is near, I wish you werena quite so 
fond of me/ But when the daughter had 
slipped away my mother would grip my 
hand and cry, ' I leave her to you ; you 
see how she has sown, it will depend on 
you how she is to reap/ And I made 
promises, but I suppose neither of us 
saw that she had already reaped. 

In the night my mother might waken 
and sit up in bed, confused by what she saw. 
While she slept, six decades or more had 
rolled back and she was again in her girl- 
hood; suddenly recalled from it she was 
dizzy, as with the rush of the years. How 
had she come into this room ? When she 
went to bed last night, after preparing her 

father*s supper, there had been a dresser 
191 



MARGARET OGILVY 

at the window : what had become of the 

salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that 

should be hanging from the rafters ? 

There were no rafters ; it was a papered 

ceiling. She had often heard of open beds, 

but how came she to be lying in one ? To 

fathom these things she would try to 

spring out of bed and be startled to find it 

a labour, as if she had been taken ill in the 

night. Hearing her move I might knock 

on the wall that separated us, this being a 

sign, prearranged between us, that I was 

near by, and so all was well, but sometimes 

the knocking seemed to belong to the 

past, and she would cry, ' That is my father 

chapping at the door, I maun rise and let 

him in.' She seemed to see him — and it 

was one much younger than herself that 

she saw — covered with snow, kicking clods 

of it from his boots, his hands swollen and 

chapped with sand and wet. Then I 
192 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

would hear — it was a common experience 
of the night — my sister soothing her 
lovingly, and turning up the light to show 
her where she was, helping her to the 
window to let her see that it was no night 
of snow, even humouring her by going 
downstairs, and opening the outer door, 
and calling into the darkness, ' Is anybody 
there ? ' and if that was not sufficient, she 
would swaddle my mother in wraps and 
take her through the rooms of the house, 
lighting them one by one, pointing out 
familiar objects, and so guiding her slowly 
through the sixty odd years she had 
jumped too quickly. And perhaps the 
end of it was that my mother came to 
my bedside and said wistfully, ^ Am I an 
auld woman ? ' 

But with daylight, even during the last 
week in which I saw her, she would be up 
and doing, for though pitifully frail she 
'3 193 



MARGARET OGILVY 

no longer suffered from any ailment. She 
seemed so well comparatively that I, hav- 
ing still the remnants of an illness to 
shake off, was to take a holiday in 
Switzerland, and then return for her, 
when we were all to go to the much- 
loved manse of her much-loved brother 
in the west country. So she had many 
preparations on her mind, and the morning 
was the time when she had any strength 
to carry them out. To leave her house 
had always been a month's work for her, 
it must be left in such perfect order, 
every corner visited and cleaned out, 
every chest probed to the bottom, the 
linen Hfted out, examined and put back 
lovingly as if to make it lie more easily in 
her absence, shelves had to be re-papered, 
a strenuous week devoted to the garret. 
Less exhaustively, but with much of the 

old exultation in her house, this w^s done 
194 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

for the last time, and then there was the 
bringing out of her own clothes, and 
the spreading of them upon the bed and 
the pleased fingering of them, and the con- 
sultations about which should be left 
behind. Ah, beautiful dream ! I clung to 
it every morning ; I would not look when 
my sister shook her head at it, but long 
before each day was done, I too knew that 
it could never be. It had come true many 
times, but never again. We two knew it, 
but when my mother, who must always 
be prepared so long beforehand, called 
for her trunk and band-boxes we brought 
them to her, and we stood silent, watch- 
ing, while she packed. 

The morning came when I was to go 
away. It had come a hundred times, 
when I was a boy, when I was an under- 
graduate, when I was a man, when she had 
seemed big and strong to me, when she 
^95 



MARGARET OGILVY 

was grown so little and it was I who put 
my arms round her. But always it was 
the same scene. I am not to write about 
it, of the parting and the turning back 
on the stair, and two people trying to 
smile, and the setting off again, and the 
cry that brought me back. Nor shall I 
say more of the silent figure in the back- 
ground, always in the background, always 
near my mother. The last I saw of these 
two was from the gate. They were at the 
window which never passes from my eyes. 
I could not see my dear sister's face, for 
she was bending over my mother, pointing 
me out to her, and telling her to wave 
her hand and smile, because I liked it 
so. That action was an epitome of my 
sister's life. 

I had been gone a fortnight when the 
telegram was put into my hands. I had 

got a letter from my sister, a few hours 
196 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

before, saying that all was well at home. 
The telegram said in five words that she 
had died suddenly the previous night. 
There was no mention of my mother, 
and I was three days' journey from home. 
The news I got on reaching London 
was this : my mother did not understand 
that her daughter was dead, and they were 
waiting for me to tell her. 

I need not have been such a coward. 
This is how these two died — for, after all, 
I was too late by twelve hours to see my 
mother alive. 

Their last night was almost gleeful. In 

the old days that hour before my mother's 

gas was lowered had so often been the 

happiest that my pen steals back to it 

again and again as I write : it was the 

time when my mother lay smiling in bed 

and we were gathered round her like 
197 



MARGARET OGILVY 

children at play, our reticence scattered 
on the floor or tossed in sport from hand 
to hand, the author become so boister- 
ous that in the pauses they were holding 
him in check by force. Rather woful 
had been some attempts latterly to renew 
those evenings, when my mother might be 
brought to the verge of them, as if some 
familiar echo called her, but where she 
was she did not clearly know, because the 
past was roaring in her ears like a great 
sea. But this night was the last gift to 
my sister. The joyousness of their voices 
drew the others in the house upstairs, 
where for more than an hour my mother 
was the centre of a merry party and so 
clear of mental eye that they, who were at 
first cautious, abandoned themselves to 
the sport, and whatever they said, by way 
of humourous rally, she instantly capped 

as of old, turning their darts against 
198 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

themselves until in self-defence they were 

three to one, and the three hard pressed. 

How my sister must have been rejoicing. 

Once again she could cry, ' Was there 

ever such a woman ! * They tell me that 

such a happiness was on the daughter's 

face that my mother commented on it, 

that having risen to go they sat down 

again, fascinated by the radiance of these 

two. And when eventually they went, 

the last words they heard were, ' They are 

gone, you see, mother, but I am here, I 

will never leave you,' and ' Na, you winna 

leave me ; fine I know that.' For some 

time afterwards their voices could be heard 

from downstairs, but what they talked of 

is not known. And then came silence. 

Had I been at home I should have been 

in the room again several times, turning 

the handle of the door softly, releasing it 

so that it did not creak, and standing 
199 



MARGARET OGILVY 

looking at them. It had been so a thou- 
sand times. But that night, would I have 
slipped out again, mind at rest, or should 
I have seen the change coming while they 
slept ? 

Let it be told in the fewest words. My 
sister awoke next morning with a head- 
ache. She had always been a martyr to 
headaches, but this one, like many another, 
seemed to be unusually severe. Never- 
theless she rose and lit my mother's fire 
and brought up her breakfast, and then 
had to return to bed. She was not able to 
write her daily letter to me, saying how my 
mother was, and almost the last thing she 
did was to ask my father to write it, and 
not to let on that she was ill. as it would 
distress me. The doctor was called, but 
she rapidly became unconscious. In this 
state she was removed from my mother's 
bed to another. It was discovered" that 

200 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

she was suffering from an internal disease. 
No one had guessed it. She herself never 
knew. Nothing could be done. In this 
unconsciousness she passed away, without 
knowing that she was leaving her mother. 
Had I known, when I heard of her death, 
that she had been saved that pain, surely 
I could have gone home more bravely with 
the words. 

Art thou afraid his power shall fail 
When comes thy evil day ? 

Ah, you would think so, I should have 
thought so, but I know myself now. 
When I reached London I did hear how 
my sister died, but still I was afraid. I 
saw myself in my mother's room telling her 
why the door of the next room was locked, 
and I was afraid. God had done so much, 
and yet I could not look confidently to 
Him for the little that was left to do. ' O 
ye of little faith ! ' These are the words I 

20I 



MARGARET OGILVY 

seem to hear my mother saying to me now, 
and she looks at me so sorrowfully. 

He did it very easily, and it has ceased 
to seem marvellous to me because it was 
so plainly His doing. My timid mother 
saw the one who was never to leave her 
carried unconscious from the room, and 
she did not break down. She who used 
to wring her hands if her daughter was 
gone for a moment never asked for her 
again, they were afraid to mention her 
name ; an awe fell upon them. But I am 
sure they need not have been so anxious. 
There are mysteries in life and death, but 
this was not one of them. A child can 
understand what happened. God said 
that my sister must come first, but He 
put His hand on my mother's eyes at 
that moment and she was altered. 

They told her that I was on my way 
home, and she said with a confident smile. 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

' He will come as quick as trains can 
bring him/ That is my reward, that is 
what I have got for my books. Every- 
thing I could do for her in this life I have 
done since I was a boy ; I look back 
through the years and I cannot see the 
smallest thing left undone. 

They were buried together on my 
mother's seventy-sixth birthday, though 
there had been three days between their 
deaths. On the last day, my mother in- 
sisted on rising from bed and going 
through the house. The arms that had 
so often helped her on that journey were 
now cold in death, but there were others 
only less loving, and she went slowly from 
room to room like one bidding good-bye, 
and in mine she said, 'The beautiful 
rows upon rows of books, and he said 
every one of them was mine, all mine ! ' 

and in the east room, which was her 

203 



MARGARET OGILVY 

greatest triumph, she said caressingly, 
' My nain bonny room ! ' All this time 
there seemed to be something that she 
wanted, but the one was dead who always 
knew what she wanted, and they produced 
many things at which she shook her head. 
They did not know then that she was 
dying, but they followed her through the 
house in some apprehension, and after she 
returned to bed they saw that she was 
becoming very weak. Once she said 
eagerly, ' Is that you, David ? ' and again 
she thought she heard her father knock- 
ing the snow off his boots. Her desire for 
that which she could not name came back 
to her, and at last they saw that what she 
wanted was the old christening robe. It 
was brought to her, and she unfolded it 
with trembling, exultant hands, and when 
she had made sure that it was still of 

virgin fairness her old arms went round it 

204 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

adoringly, and upon her face there was 
the ineffable mysterious glow of mother- 
hood. Suddenly she said, ' Wha's bairn *s 
dead ? is a bairn of mine dead ? ' but those 
watching dared not speak, and then slowly 
as if with an effort of memory she repeated 
our names aloud in the order in which we 
were born. Only one, who should have 
come third among the ten, did she omit, 
the one in the next room, but at the end, 
after a pause, she said her name and 
repeated it again and again and again, 
lingering over it as if it were the most 
exquisite music and this her dying song. 
And yet it was a very commonplace name. 
They knew now that she was dying. 
She told them to fold up the christening 
robe and almost sharply she watched 
them put it away, and then for some time 
she talked of the long lovely life that had 

been hers, and of Him to whom she owed 

205 



MARGARET OGILVY 

it. She said good-bye to them all, and 

at last turned her face to the side where 

her best-beloved had lain, and for over an 

hour she prayed. They only caught the 

words now and again, and the last they 

heard were ' God ' and ' love.' I think 

God was smiling when He took her to 

Him, as He had so often smiled at her 

during those seventy -six years. 

I saw her lying dead, and her face was 

beautiful and serene. But it was the 

other room I entered first, and it was by 

my sister's side that I fell upon my knees. 

The rounded completeness of a woman's 

life that was my mother's had not been for 

her. She would not have it at the price. 

' I '11 never leave you, mother.' — ^ Fine 

I know you '11 never leave me.' The 

fierce joy of loving too much, it is a 

terrible thing. My sister's mouth was 

firmly closed, as if she had got her way. 
206 



ART THOU AFRAID? 

And now I am left without them, but I 
trust my memory will ever go back to 
those happy days, not to rush through 
them, but dallying here and there, even 
as my mother wanders through my books. 
And if I also live to a time when age must 
dim my mind and the past comes sweep- 
ing back Hke the shades of night over the 
bare road of the present it will not, I 
believe, be my youth I shall see but hers, 
not a boy clinging to his mother*s skirt 
and crying, ' Wait till I 'm a man, and 
you '11 lie on feathers,' but a little girl in a 
magenta frock and a white pinafore, who 
comes toward me through the long 
parks, singing to herself, and carrying her 
father's dinner in a flaggon. 

THE END 



207 



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021 376 221 7 












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